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.
Two years at the keyboard getting these to work.
spent on AI tooling.
hours since June 2024.
skills, each one a job written down once.
automations on a schedule, running while I sleep.
memory files. Things it got wrong once and never again.
tools live on the web, hosted for free.
You get the working version.
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.

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

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

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

4. It lands in my inbox
Ready to read on the train back. I fix the odd line and send.
Workflow #2
A WhatsApp account connected to AI.
Workflow #3
The lead magnet builder.



Brand pulled off the live site, real data behind the maths, hosted for free. Each one is a day.
Workflow #4
Three more things it made.



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.
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.
The file is ignored by git and hidden from every transcript.
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.
Setting up Claude for maximum power
Todoist, Playwright, the build loop.
Eight things to swipe: six skills and two files
The six skills.
.claude/skills/cold-email-listkit/automation/finance-inbox/.claude/skills/grill-me/.claude/skills/call-context/.claude/skills/skill-creator/.claude/skills/format-fidelity/Eight things to swipe: six skills and two files
The two files.
What the writing skills produce
Reads like a person wrote it.
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.

Tips
What I wish someone had told me.
What happens next.
The receipt-handling one Tom mentioned, for instance. Message me on Slack and we'll book a call.