Friday afternoon, in the team chat: "Heads up, we're switching to Claude on Monday."
Fine, until you remember everything you set up in the old one. The team assistant that answers price questions. The instructions you tuned for weeks. The price list you uploaded, the rules about travel days and minimum charges, the examples that finally made it stop rounding wrong.
None of that comes along. So on Monday you copy the instructions into a new Claude project, upload the files again, explain the rules again, and test it until it's close. Close, but not quite the same answer it gave last week. And next year, when someone wants to try a different AI, you do it all again.
Why the setup is stuck in the app
A custom assistant or project in a chat app is a set of instructions and files that lives inside one chat app. It's useful, but it belongs to that app. The chat reads your instructions and has another go every time, so the answer can drift, and moving means rebuilding.
A tool is different. It does one job the same way every time, with the inputs and outputs you agreed on and tested. If you keep it in Smia instead of inside a chat app, it doesn't care which chat calls it. A tool can also reach your own systems behind a login; you connect it once and Smia keeps the access.
What switching looks like with tools in Smia
- Your team built and tested its tools once, in Smia.
- The company moves to Claude.
- In Claude, go to Customize → Connectors, click + Add → Add custom connector, name it Smia and paste
https://app.smia.io/mcp. Sign in. - Ask the same question. The same tool runs and gives the same answer. Nothing to rebuild.
On a Team or Enterprise plan, your owner adds it first. Free Claude plans allow one custom connector.
Your tools don't belong to Claude either. They live in Smia, not in any one chat app. (If part of your team is on ChatGPT: custom connectors there need a Business, Enterprise or Edu workspace.)
Try it: build one tool you'd hate to rebuild
Add Smia to Claude as above, then paste this, with your own prices in place of the example:
Use Smia to build a tool called price_lookup. It takes a service name and returns our price in NOK ex. VAT from this list: Site visit, 1 day: 9,200. Site visit, 2 days: 18,400. Report: 6,500. Travel day: 4,000. Match the service name ignoring upper and lower case. If the service isn't on the list, say so and list the services that are, instead of guessing. Test it with "2-day site visit" and with something not on the list, then turn it on.
- Check the tests. The first should return 18,400 NOK. The second should say it isn't on the list and show what is. Also try the name with different capitals, like "2-Day Site Visit". If either goes wrong, tell Claude what came back and ask it to fix and test again.
- Use it. Next time, just ask: "What do we charge for a report?" The tool looks up one service at a time; ask for two and the chat simply asks it twice.
How to know it travels
- Ask "List my Smia tools." price_lookup should be there and switched on.
- Open a new conversation and ask again. It works without you explaining the price list. Built once, used on the next run.
- Sign in to Smia from another Claude account, or a teammate's, and ask again. Same tool, same answer, nothing rebuilt.
What to build next
Once your price list lives in a tool, the next one can reach a system behind a login: your quote register or your project list. Build it once, test it, and it stays put the next time the company changes AI.