Superco
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The Claude Quick-Start

  • A quick-start on setting up Claude so it's more than a chatbot.
  • The eight skills I've built, about 200 hours of work, to swipe today.
  • Eight tips that took me months to find. Now they're yours, in an afternoon.
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Two years at the keyboard getting these to work.

$0

spent on AI tooling.

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hours since June 2024.

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skills, each one a job written down once.

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automations on a schedule, running while I sleep.

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memory files. Things it got wrong once and never again.

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tools live on the web, hosted for free.

You get the working version.

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For inspiration

Four things it does for me.

Not to copy line for line. To show the shape of what's possible once it's set up properly. Then we'll do the set-up.

Workflow #1. A demo call ends, the proposal writes itself.Calendar, transcript, proposal, inbox. No hands.
Workflow #2. A WhatsApp account connected to AI.My whole set-up, run from my phone. Live, in a minute.
Workflow #3. The lead magnet builder.One skill, three interactive tools, each one about a day.
Workflow #4. Three more things it made.A live tracker, a personal one, and the deck you're looking at.
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Workflow #1

A demo call ends. The proposal writes itself.

Google Calendar

1. It spots the demo

Every six hours it checks the calendar for a demo call with no proposal yet.

Fathom

2. It pulls the transcript

The Fathom recording of the call, plus everything already in the prospect's file.

Google Docs

3. It writes the proposal

Situation, goal, blockers, objections, pain points. In the prospect's own words, in my template.

Gmail

4. It lands in my inbox

Ready to read on the train back. I fix the odd line and send.

Proposal - ██████ .docx
The first page of a proposal, written from the call
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Workflow #2

A WhatsApp account connected to AI.

What it isA second WhatsApp number that sits in my client group chats. When I message it an instruction, it runs my whole set-up from my phone and replies in the chat.
What it can doAnything I'd type in the terminal. Ask it "eta?" on a running job and it answers from the progress board. Only my number can give it instructions.
WatchI'll message it now, from this phone, and we'll see what comes back.
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Workflow #3

The lead magnet builder.

Superco AI Visibility Check
AI Visibility CheckSuperco's own. 503 brands scored on whether AI recommends them.
StudioCanal UK licensing census
StudioCanal licensing census266,522 stores read, 24,071 checked by hand.
Pharmacy group calculator
Pharmacy group calculatorA group works out its own numbers before anyone gets on a call.

Brand pulled off the live site, real data behind the maths, hosted for free. Each one is a day.

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Workflow #4

Three more things it made.

The Superco tracker
The Superco trackerA live sheet fed from the campaign system. Every reply and its stage.
A shortlist of physios
A physio shortlist, for meTwenty clinics near home, scored and mapped. Twelve minutes. The same set-up does the personal stuff.
This presentation
This deckBuilt by Claude in the Superco brand, hosted on pages.dev, and the presenter mode you're watching.
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Setting up Claude for maximum power

The file structure.

Reason: nothing lives in a chat. Anything that mattered went into a file, and the next session reads the file.

CLAUDE.md who it is for you. Read every session .env every API key, never pasted into a chat clients/ thrive/profile.md all it should know about them historic-newspapers/profile.md integrations/ jira/jira.py how to talk to the tool jira/LEARNINGS.md what it worked out, on top of the docs shopify/LEARNINGS.md .claude/skills/ call-context/SKILL.md the job, written down once grill-me/SKILL.md knowledge-base/ opinions.md what you believe about your craft slop-text-removal.md the AI tells it must never write memory/ what it got wrong once automation/ the jobs that run on a schedule
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Setting up Claude for maximum power

The .env file.

Reason: one file holds every API key. Claude reads it, and any tool with a key in that file is one sentence away.

ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-…
Run this overnight.
DEEPLINE_API_KEY=…
Enrich this list with phone numbers. (Juliet)
JIRA_API_TOKEN=…
Add these to Jira and pull last week's tickets. (Lisa, Rachel)
SHOPIFY_ACCESS_TOKEN=…
Which of these stores are on Plus? (Archie)
APIFY_API_KEY=…
Scrape every store on this list.
TODOIST_API_KEY=…
Tick that off and add the next step.
GOOGLE_CREDENTIALS=…
Read my calendar and send the doc to the client.

The file is ignored by git and hidden from every transcript.

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Setting up Claude for maximum power

CLAUDE.md

Reason: it's the file it reads before anything else, every single session. How to reply to you, what to do every time without being asked, the rules it may never break. Write it once and it stops needing reminding.

# CLAUDE.md, an excerpt from mine ## Hard rules - Use normal hyphens only. No em dashes or en dashes. - Write in British English spelling. - If Stef is clearly wrong, say so plainly. - Never bluff. If unsure or unverified, say so and check. - Always give an ETA up front for any task that runs longer than a couple of tool calls. - Every action that changes rows at scale ends with a random sample of 10 to 30 rows, shown in chat.
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Setting up Claude for maximum power

Todoist, Playwright, the build loop.

TodoistEvery multi-step job Claude runs gets a task with a subtask per step, ticked as it goes. You can see what it's doing from your phone.
PlaywrightIts own browser, driven by code. Far quicker than Claude clicking around Chrome, and it can log in once and keep going.
Build loopFor anything big. It writes the scoring rubric before the build exists, builds, renders, then something that didn't do the building checks it.
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Eight things to swipe: six skills and two files

The six skills.

cold-email-listkit (Sophie: "the first draft usually sounds very robotic")One writer's rules, measured from real emails. Every draft passes the slop file before you see it. .claude/skills/cold-email-listkit/
finance-inbox (Tom: "receipts and paid invoices, about an hour a month")Watches Gmail for invoices, converts to GBP, adds them to the tracker, nightly. automation/finance-inbox/
grill-me (Lisa, Sophie: "I want it to ask me the questions")Before it builds anything it interrogates you. You answer questions instead of writing a brief. .claude/skills/grill-me/
call-contextA call transcript into decisions, actions and follow-ups. Everyone in this room sits in calls. .claude/skills/call-context/
skill-creatorRecord yourself doing the task once, hand it the recording, and it writes the skill file. .claude/skills/skill-creator/
format-fidelity"Make it exactly like this one." Matches a document's formatting at the smallest unit and proves it side by side. .claude/skills/format-fidelity/
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Eight things to swipe: six skills and two files

The two files.

# integrations/<tool>/LEARNINGS.md # (Lisa) the docs go in, this sits on top ## Index 48 dated gotchas across ~925 lines. This index exists because the problem with this file is finding things. Leads: reading and writing - Lead label vs status are two different API fields - Writing a lead label uses POST /lead/data/update - A "not found" in the value cell becomes the value
# knowledge-base/slop-text-removal.md # (Sophie) 34 tells, checked on the way out ## Contractions are mandatory "it is" -> "it's", "do not" -> "don't" ## Banned - em dashes and en dashes - "it's not X, it's Y" - the rule of three - "genuinely", "seamless", "robust" - signposting: "here's the thing" - a stat with no source
# grill-me/SKILL.md, the whole prompt Before building, grill me. Ask every question needed to avoid wrong assumptions. Focus on: - inputs - outputs - user checkpoints - failure modes - quality gates - anti-patterns - where this should be interactive vs YOLO
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What the writing skills produce

Reads like a person wrote it.

Superco, C2 Migration. Approved 6 September, going to 6,525 leads.Hey {{first_name}}, I'll cut the fluff and get right to it. We can move you off {{custom_platform}} onto Shopify in 7-13 weeks without losing one of your URLs, order records or rankings. Represent went from £10m to £60m on Shopify after moving with us. Would it be helpful if I sent over our migration guide?
LinkedIn, from the post skill. A different voice on purpose.I went to a freight tech conference to find logistics clients. There were no logistics companies at the conference. There were 214 vendors. Selling to each other. The keynote was "orchestration". The panel was "orchestration: what's next". At the networking dinner I pitched a man who was pitching me at the same time. Neither of us noticed for six minutes.
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One of the six, running

Receipts, collected every night.

finance-inbox (Tom's ask)

At 19:00 it reads the inbox, logs each invoice in GBP with a category, ignores the newsletters, and tells me which vendors I'm paying for and not using. I haven't typed a transaction by hand since July.

Browser harness

For the ones that never email a receipt. Logs in once, then once a month opens each portal and collects them itself.

The finance-inbox log for 5 and 6 September
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Tips

What I wish someone had told me.

"Make this a standing rule"Say it when you don't want it to forget. It writes the rule into a file it reads every time.
DictateWhisperFlow. Talk instead of type; it's four times faster and it sounds like you.
Copy a process you already followFar better than inventing one with AI. Record yourself, hand over the recording.
pages.devFree hosting for anything it builds. One command.
/watchA YouTube link in, the transcript out, instantly. That's how I learned most of this.
/loopRun a prompt repeatedly while the session stays open. Force it to keep trying until a process is better.
/goalIt keeps working across turns until the condition is met. Set it and go to bed.
/doctorA setup checkup that diagnoses configuration issues and can fix them. Run it before you ask anyone.
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What happens next.

I'll send you the transcript of this session.Give it to Claude. It asks you a few questions, then builds the set-up you've just seen, for you.
One honest thing.The first time you build anything takes about three times longer than doing it by hand. Every run after that is three times easier.
Want a skill but don't know how to build it?

The receipt-handling one Tom mentioned, for instance. Message me on Slack and we'll book a call.

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