Imagine this: you're looking at a blank page, wrestling with a big, complex project, and not sure where to start. What if you had a partner who could help you break it down? Claude is a powerful, intelligent collaborator that amplifies your capabilities across all of your work. Claude brings AI intelligence, but you bring the context and expertise that makes the work meaningful.
By the end of this lesson, you'll be able to:
When you open Claude.ai, you'll see a clean interface with a text input area at the bottom of the screen.
Your prompts can range from simple questions (like brainstorming code names for a new feature) to complex requests to co-create files.
All interactions with Claude begin with a prompt, and these prompts, combined with other context, impact Claude's response. The best approach when speaking to Claude is like you would a coworker—naturally, concisely, and conversationally.
But you may ask, what is a good prompt? Before your next conversation with Claude, consider a few things:
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Here's an example prompt that uses all three elements:
I'm the marketing lead at an indie streaming startup, and we're preparing an investor pitch deck for Series A investors. Can you research the current state of the independent film streaming market and identify key trends, competitor positioning, and growth opportunities? Use current web research with citations and structure it as a professional report of up to 5 pages, with an executive summary, market analysis, competitive landscape, and growth opportunities.
In this prompt:
Uploads, connectors, and custom preferences offer ways to give Claude even more context about your work.
Claude can analyze both text and visual elements (like images, charts, and graphics) in PDFs and other documents. Supported file types include PDF, DOCX, CSV, TXT, and common image formats like PNG and JPEG.
Some practical ways to use file uploads:
Once uploaded, Claude will automatically attempt to parse the file's content. In the chat, the file appears as an attachment and you can then prompt Claude about it.
Pro-tip: If you'd like Claude to consider specific preferences in every response, go to Settings > General > 'What personal preferences should Claude consider?' to set preferences that apply to every conversation.
Conversations with Claude are meant to be iterative. Chaining bite-sized prompts together allows for a natural dialogue where you guide the conversation based on Claude's replies.
If Claude's first response isn't quite what you wanted, you have several options:
Ask follow-up questions: Build on Claude's response by asking for more detail, a different angle, or clarification. For example: "Can you expand on the second point?" or "That's helpful, but can you make it more concise?"
Provide feedback: Tell Claude what you liked and didn't like about its response. "This is good, but the tone is too formal. Can you make it more conversational?"
Redirect or restart: If Claude went in a different direction than you intended, simply steer it back. "Actually, I was asking about X, not Y. Let me clarify...". Worst case, restart your conversation in a new chat to fully refresh the context.
Pro tip: You can also click the pencil icon on any of your messages to edit and resubmit your prompt — useful when you want to refine your request rather than add a new message.
There are two features that help Claude work better for you over time to increase the power of your prompts.
Memory automatically saves key context from your conversations — your role, preferences, past decisions, and working style — so you don't have to repeat yourself every time you start a new chat. For example, if you tell Claude you work in marketing at a B2B company, it'll remember that context going forward. You can review, edit, or delete anything Claude remembers anytime in Settings, and memory syncs across all your devices.
Skills are reusable sets of instructions that teach Claude how to approach specific tasks and workflows. They can encode your preferences for everything from how you write and the output formats you want to the specific processes you follow, the expertise you want applied, or how you like different types of work handled. Claude applies them automatically whenever they're relevant.
Before moving on, try prompting Claude with a question or task. If you need an idea to get started, feel free to explore use cases for inspiration.
In the next lesson, we'll explore how to give Claude direction—adjusting its tone, format, and approach to match exactly what you need.