This folder is your claim.

Everything to do with your VA claim lives here from now on. Your records, your
notes, and the files your assistant creates as you go.


WHAT TO DO

1. Move this whole "VA Claim" folder somewhere you will find it again.
   Your Documents folder is a good place.

2. Open your AI assistant, meaning Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini, and point it
   at this folder.

   No assistant set up yet? Go to vetclaimsystem.org and scroll to the section
   headed "Keep Your Records on Your Own Machine". Choose Mac or Windows,
   then download the free step by step guide. It assumes you know nothing
   and takes about twenty minutes.

3. Say exactly this to it:

   Read the toolkit file in this folder and follow the instructions in it.

That is the whole setup. It will take it from there and tell you what to do
next, one step at a time.


WHAT IS IN HERE

   START HERE.txt
   This file.

   Build Your Own VA Claim System.txt
   The toolkit. You do not need to read it. Your assistant does.
   It is written in plain text on purpose, so you can open it and read every
   word of what you are handing over. Nothing in it is hidden.


IF YOU ALREADY HAVE RECORDS

Put them in this folder too. Decision letters, medical records, anything you
have already gathered. If you do not have any yet, that is fine. The system
will tell you how to request them and how long each one takes.


ONE THING BEFORE YOU START

If you have not filed an Intent to File with VA yet, do that first. It takes
about ten minutes at va.gov and it locks in your effective date for twelve
months, which means the time you spend gathering records still counts toward
your back pay. Everything else can wait. That cannot.


vetclaimsystem.org
Free to use, free to share.
