We propose a general strategy to develop quantum many-body approximations of primitives in linear algebra algorithms. As a practical example, we introduce a coupled-cluster inspired framework to produce approximate Hamiltonian moments, and demonstrate its application in various linear algebra algorithms for ground state estimation. Through numerical examples, we illustrate the difference between the ground-state energies arising from quantum many-body linear algebra and those from the analogous many-body perturbation theory. Our results support the general idea of designing quantum many-body approximations outside of perturbation theory, providing a route to new algorithms and approximations.