01 / 16

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.

02 / 16

Two years at the keyboard getting these to work.

$0

spent on AI tooling.

0

hours since June 2024.

0

skills and automations, each one a job written down once.

03 / 16

For inspiration

Four things Claude does for me.

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. LinkedIn posts in my voice.One a day, from a skill that holds how I write.

04 / 16

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.

The recap page of a proposal, in the Google Docs viewer

05 / 16

Workflow #2

A WhatsApp account connected to AI.

What it isA second WhatsApp number that sits in any group chat. 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.

06 / 16

Workflow #3

The lead magnet builder.

Superco AI Visibility Check — **AI Visibility Check**Superco's own. 503 brands scored on whether AI recommends them.

StudioCanal UK licensing census — **StudioCanal licensing census**266,522 stores read, 24,071 checked by hand.

**Pharmacy group calculator**A group works out its own numbers before anyone gets on a call.

07 / 16

Workflow #4

LinkedIn posts in my voice.

How it works

A skill holds how I write, measured from my own posts rather than described. Every morning it drafts one from something that happened in the week. I edit a line or two and post.

Why it reads like me

The draft goes through the same slop file as everything else before I see it. The tells are removed by a check, not by hope.

Row 208 of the LinkedIn content sheet, as written by the skill.I sent 84,291 cold emails to logistics companies to A/B test send times. The reply rates: Tuesday, 10am - 1.1%. The classic. The inbox is a warzone. Friday, 4:55pm - 0.2%. Everyone has already left, mentally. Sunday, 11pm - 0.6%. Every reply contained a typo and one contained a confession. Tuesday, 3:47am - 9.8%. - the owner is already awake - he is on a check call with a driver in Wyoming - my email is the only friendly thing in his phone Testing 2:00am next. Closer to the pain.

08 / 16

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

09 / 16

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.

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.

10 / 16

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.

11 / 16

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.

12 / 16

Skills to swipe

The six skills.

format-fidelityMatches any formatting, a website or a document, and recreates it at high fidelity. Proves it side by side. .claude/skills/format-fidelity/

skill-creatorWrites skill files better than Claude does on its own. Record yourself doing the task once, hand it the recording. .claude/skills/skill-creator/

call-contextA call transcript into decisions, actions and follow-ups. Everyone in this room sits in calls. .claude/skills/call-context/

grill-me Lisa, SophieBefore it builds anything it interrogates you. You answer questions instead of writing a brief. .claude/skills/grill-me/

finance-inbox TomWatches Gmail for invoices, converts to GBP, adds them to the tracker, nightly. automation/finance-inbox/

slop-text-removal.md and design-system.md SophieTwo files that make it write and design like a person. 34 writing tells and 21 design rules, checked before anything leaves. knowledge-base/

13 / 16

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?

Before the slop file

"Hope this finds you well. I wanted to reach out because we specialise in seamless Shopify migrations that genuinely transform your e-commerce experience."

14 / 16

One of the six, running

Receipts, collected every night.

finance-inbox (Tom's ask)

At 19:00 it reads the inbox, logs each invoice into this sheet in GBP with a category, ignores the newsletters, and flags anything it's unsure of. 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 financial tracker sheet, rows logged by finance-inbox

15 / 16

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.

16 / 16

Next steps.

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.

I'll give you the skills I mentioned.The six, plus the two files. Drop them in the folder and they work.

One clarification.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.