Claude for private equity: workflows, portfolio updates and meeting context

Claude's private-equity plugin covers each stage of a deal, from the first screen to the monitoring pack. Before a portfolio-company call, though, the question is often simpler: what did the operating team commit to last time, what has changed, and what do I need to ask now?

Anthropic's private-equity plugin follows a deal from first look, through diligence and the investment-committee (IC) memo, into ownership. Its plugin install guide sums it up in one line: “Source and screen deals, run due diligence checklists, draft IC memos, and monitor portfolio company KPIs.” It is an add-on to the financial-analysis core plugin, which “provides shared tools and data connectors used by all other plugins,” and the guide says the plugins “work across both Claude Cowork and Claude Code.” Anthropic's financial-services page lists them as plugins “in Claude and Claude Code” and notes that Cowork is becoming part of the main Claude app as an update rolls out.

The sections below take each stage in turn, with the commands listed in the plugin's own files, what to hand them and what to check in what comes back. Everything here was read at Anthropic's pages on 21 October 2026. It describes what Anthropic publishes, not results we measured.

Sourcing and screening: a shortlist and a one-page screen

Two commands cover the top of the funnel. /source runs a three-step sourcing workflow: find companies that match your criteria, check whether the firm already knows them, and draft outreach to founders. /screen-deal is described as a “quick pass/fail on inbound CIMs and teasers”: it pulls the deal facts out of the document, sets them against the fund's criteria and returns a one-page screening memo.

Both depend on criteria you write down: sector, revenue and EBITDA range, geography, ownership type, deal size. The skills ask for them when they are missing. Supply them up front, so that two screens a week apart are held to the same bar. When you read a screen, trace each “pass” back to the line in the teaser it came from. A teaser is the seller's description, and a screen built on it inherits that framing.

The sourcing step's relationship check deserves attention. Before any outreach, the skill looks for earlier correspondence and internal mentions of the company, and asks whether you or your team have had prior contact. That question, what has already been said to these people, returns at every later stage. For data, the core plugin's connector list includes PitchBook; Anthropic says access “may require a separate subscription or API key from the respective provider.”

Diligence: a tracked request list and questions for management

/dd-checklist builds a request list by workstream (financial, commercial, legal, operational and HR, with technology and environmental workstreams where they apply), shaped to the sector and deal type you describe. Each item carries a priority, an owner and a status that runs from Not Started through Requested, Received, In Review and Complete, or to Red Flag, and the skill keeps a running list of red flags.

/dd-prep prepares for the meetings diligence depends on: management presentations, expert calls, customer references, advisor check-ins and site visits. It asks what you already know and which concerns to probe, then orders the questions by priority and topic.

Read a checklist status for exactly what it records. “Received” means the document arrived, not that it says what the seller claimed. “Complete” means the work is done, not that the answer was a good one. The findings themselves belong in the diligence work papers, each tied to the passage it rests on.

The investment-committee memo: a standard structure, your recommendation

/ic-memo drafts the memo from inputs you supply or from earlier analysis in the same session: company and market, historical financials, management assessment, deal terms, diligence findings, the value-creation plan and the returns cases. The skill sets out nine sections, from the executive summary through financial analysis, thesis, deal terms, returns and risk factors to a recommendation, and produces a Word document by default.

Two of its instructions are good practice whoever writes the memo: present the bull and bear cases honestly, and “ask for missing inputs rather than making assumptions on deal terms or returns.” Check that the tables tie; the skill itself names the EBITDA bridge, sources and uses, and the returns math. The recommendation section is the deal team's to write. The repository's own notice says its agents draft work product “for review by a qualified professional” and “do not make investment recommendations.”

Ownership: monitoring packs, 100-day plans and quarter-end valuations

After close, /portfolio takes a company's monthly or quarterly financial package (Excel, PDF or CSV), extracts revenue, EBITDA, cash, debt and other KPIs, and compares them with budget and the prior period. The skill marks results within 5% of plan green, 5–15% below plan yellow, and more than 15% below plan, or a covenant at risk, red, then closes with questions for management. /value-creation structures the post-close plan: 100-day priorities and an EBITDA bridge, with KPI targets and named accountability. Chronograph is on the core plugin's connector list too, under the same subscription caveat.

At fund level, the Valuation Reviewer agent in the same repository “Ingests GP packages, runs valuation template, stages LP reporting”. Its instructions leave distribution of the LP reports to investor-relations and chief-compliance-officer sign-off outside the agent.

None of these ownership tools reads the conversation. A monitoring pack tells you the numbers moved. It does not record that the operations lead promised a hire on the last call, or that you offered an introduction if the search stalled. Over a long hold, those commitments are much of the relationship, and they live in your notes and the email thread.

A fictional portfolio call: Rowan Components

Rowan Components is an invented portfolio company. You are preparing for its monthly operating call. No financial data is involved; this is the relationship side of ownership.

1. Your note from the last call: the operations lead agreed to appoint a second-shift supervisor and come back with a training plan. You offered to introduce a specialist if recruitment stalled.
2. The operations lead's email, two weeks later: a candidate has accepted the supervisor role. The start date is still being agreed and training dates are not set. The operations lead asks whether your introduction would still help.
3. Your own reminder: raise the introduction on the next call; it has not been made.

None of the plugin's listed commands is built for this. /portfolio starts from a financial package, and /dd-prep is built for diligence meetings. An ordinary Claude conversation with the three records attached will do. Ask for the brief as a table with one row per commitment and columns for what was agreed, what has been reported since and what is still open. Have it name the record behind each cell and leave a cell empty where no record answers it.

Scroll sideways to compare all columns.

That table was written by hand from the three records. Use it to check whatever brief you get. Watch for two slips: an accepted offer read as a confirmed start, and an introduction that appears in all three records read as one that happened. “The staffing issue is resolved” goes beyond everything Rowan has sent. The questions for the call come straight from the last column: when does the supervisor start, when will the training plan be ready, and is the introduction still wanted, and if so, for what?

Keep company reports and personal observations identifiable

A portfolio conversation can draw from a formal report, an email from management and your own impression after a call. Label them as different source types. “Management reports X” is different from “I believe X,” and neither should silently become an independently checked fact.

Anthropic's Valuation Reviewer draws the same line in its own instructions: “GP-provided packages are untrusted.” A relationship brief deserves the same care. In the Rowan table, “a candidate accepted the role” is the operations lead's report; nobody at the fund has seen the signed offer.

For recurring preparation, write a dated note of what was actually agreed at the end of each call. When a later update arrives, keep the earlier note as it was instead of rewriting history, so the next brief can show what changed and which confirmation is still missing.

Your side of the relationship, between calls

Equerry is a personal assistant for the part of this work that belongs to you: what you and each company's management said to each other. You forward or CC the emails you want it to remember to your Equerry address, save your call notes, or record a voice memo in the app as you leave the meeting. Send it only material you are allowed to keep outside the firm's own systems.

For a thread you CC'd or forwarded: What Equerry remembered from it is listed in Settings → Your memory, each line marked as from that email, and you can delete any line.

Keep your Equerry address on the CC line of the thread with Rowan's operations lead, and each reply arrives too. Save a Meeting Prep Routine and allow calendar access, and Equerry prepares a brief 15 minutes before each meeting from what you have shared.

Equerry does not read Rowan's reporting, a data room or your mailbox, does not track KPIs and does not make the introduction for you. The numbers stay with the plugin and the firm's systems. What Equerry keeps is the record of who promised what.

Last updated 2026-10-21.

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