Chat assistant
Ask questions in plain language and keep the conversation going. Follow-ups build on what came before, so you can say "shorter", "more formal" or "now do the same for Q3" without repeating yourself.
Lesson 1
What Claude Is
A general-purpose AI collaborator. It works best when you treat it like a sharp new colleague, not a search box.
Writing partner
Drafting, rewriting, tightening, changing tone, outlining. The quality jumps when you give it your own rough draft or notes instead of asking it to start from nothing.
Research helper
Summarise long documents, compare sources, pull out the key numbers, and turn messy material into a structured brief. With web search on, it can look things up and cite where it found them.
Workflow builder
Beyond one-off answers: reusable instructions, connected tools and automations that do the same job the same way every time. Sections 5, 9 and 12 show how.
The mental model
Claude knows a lot in general but nothing about your situation until you tell it. Generic input gives generic output. Every section after this one is about closing that gap.
Try this prompt
I run a 6-person bakery. Act as an operations consultant. Ask me 5 questions about how we take orders today, then suggest 3 changes we could make this month.
Avoid
- Using it like Google (one keyword, no context)
- Accepting the first answer instead of iterating
- Assuming it already knows your business