macOS
claude.ai in any browser, or the Mac desktop app. Identical features, identical chats.
CLAUDE ESSENTIALS · SESSION 1 OF 5
First Contact
You can't break anything. There's no wrong question.
Here's the hour: tour the room, ask anything, learn to ask better, grade a prompt together, then do one real thing you actually need done.
This entire site was built with Claude. That's Session 5.
§1 · Know the Room
This is the whole room.
One quiet screen is the entire interface: a place to type, a place for the past, and a couple of doors we’ll open in later sessions. Tap the numbered dots to meet all eight parts. Nothing you click can break anything.
claude.ai
A map, not a screenshot. But everything lives where it really lives.
Tour stop
– / 8
Tap the numbered dots as we tour the room.
Or step through with the arrows. Nothing in here can break.
ONE ACCOUNT · EVERY SCREEN
Same room on every device.
Most of this class runs a Mac; tonight’s screen share is Windows. Nothing you’re about to see will look any different on yours.
Windows
Same site, same desktop app, same everything. What you’re watching tonight.
iPhone · iPad · Android
The mobile app rides along: snap a photo and ask about it, talk instead of type.
your chats follow your account: start on your phone in the coffee line, finish on the Mac at your desk.
the entire platform difference tonight: ⌘ on a Mac where Windows says Ctrl. That’s it.
§1.5 · Try to Break It
Go ahead. Try to break it.
Everyone in the room is quietly afraid of doing it wrong. So here's a padded room: five things people are scared to do, and what actually happens when you do them.
attempts to break claude: 0 · times broken: 0
pick a fear, see what actually happens
§2 · Ask Anything
Ask like nobody’s watching.
Nobody is. Claude doesn’t sigh, doesn’t judge, and doesn’t need you to sound smart. And the same question can be answered at any depth. Here’s one question three ways, then a dial you can drive yourself.
One question, three depths
“How does Claude actually work?”
Claude read almost everything people have ever written down: books, letters, homework, bedtime stories. All that reading made it very good at one game: guessing which word should come next. When you ask it something, it plays that game so well that the guesses turn into a real answer, just for you.
Claude is a program that practiced on a gigantic amount of human writing. Practice meant predicting the next word, billions of times, until the patterns behind grammar, facts, and explanations sank in. When you type, it isn’t looking your answer up anywhere. It’s writing one, word by word, out of everything it absorbed.
Claude is a large language model: a transformer trained on text at scale to predict the next token, then shaped with reinforcement learning from human feedback and constitutional AI to be helpful and honest. At inference it samples token by token from a probability distribution conditioned on your entire conversation. No lookup, no database of answers: the behavior is learned, not retrieved.
// jargon permitted in this card only
Depth dial
“Why is the sky blue?” Explain it like I’m a 5-year-old.
Sunlight looks white, but it’s secretly every color at once. The sky is better at bouncing the blue part around than any other color, so blue gets sprinkled all over the place. When you look up, you’re seeing all that bounced blue.
Depth is a dial you control: just say who you are.
§3 · The Prompt Ladder
One trip. Four asks.
The same person plans the same nine days in Italy four times. Each rung adds one ingredient — context (who this is for), format (the shape of the answer), and a follow-up (what happens next). Watch what Claude hands back change.
1/4 rungs · climb all four
SPOT THE DIFFERENCE — toggle an ingredient
promptL1 · the drive-by
plan a trip to italy
claudewhat you get back
Italy is one of the world’s most popular destinations, with something for everyone. Here are the top 10 things to do:
- Visit the Colosseum in Rome
- Ride a gondola in Venice
- See the Leaning Tower of Pisa
- Toss a coin in the Trevi Fountain
- Eat pizza in Naples
Would you like more tips for planning your trip?
BUILD-A-PROMPT
Your turn — stack the ingredients.
The base ask stays put. Add what Claude couldn’t have guessed, and watch the level climb.
Help me plan a dinner party.
Level 1 ask
This is the whole lesson in one toy — each ingredient you add changes what you get back.
The Prompt Ladder — one-page PDF
take the ladder home — it’s the fridge-magnet version of tonight
§3.5 · The Follow-up Gym
The first answer is a first draft.
Beginners treat the first reply as final: they settle for it, or they give up on it. Regulars treat it as the opening offer. Five moves, one thread. Watch it get good.
follow-ups used: 0/5
what's compound interest?
CLAUDE
Compound interest is interest calculated on both the initial principal and the interest accumulated in earlier periods. Because each period's earnings are added to the base before the next calculation, the balance grows exponentially rather than linearly. The standard formula is A = P(1 + r/n)^(nt), where P is principal, r is annual rate, n is compounding frequency, and t is years.
FOLLOW-UPS →
§4 · The Prompt Grader
Paste a prompt. Get graded.
Everything you just learned, turned into a machine. It scores your prompt out of 10, names what's missing, and hands back a stronger version.
PROMPT GRADER
scores the three ingredients
0/4000
TRY ONE →
or Ctrl + Enter
TRY IT · YOUR REAL TASK
Grade a prompt for one of your three real tasks. Improve it until it scores 8 or better. Then run the improved version in your real Claude tab and watch the difference.
Claude built this tool, every line of it.
In Session 5, you build one of your own. No code required.
§4.5 · What Not to Paste
You can't break it. You can overshare.
The one thing tonight that can actually go wrong isn't a wrong question: it's pasting something that shouldn't leave the building. Three rules, and a thirty-second drill.
THE ONE-LINE RULE
If you wouldn't email it to an outside consultant, don't paste it. Claude doesn't need the real names to give you real help.
THE NEVER LIST
- passwords
- card & account numbers
- social security & other government IDs
- API keys
No task ever needs these to think with you.
OTHER PEOPLE'S DETAILS
Your clients, patients, and coworkers didn't agree to be pasted. Swap names and numbers for placeholders: [client], [phone]. The advice comes back just as good, and find-and-replace fixes it on the way out.
Doing work-work? Use your company's Claude workspace, not a personal login. If you're not sure what's approved, ask IT once. It's a five-minute answer that covers you forever.
THE 30-SECOND DRILL
0/5 scrubbedThis message is about to be pasted into Claude. Tap everything that shouldn't be.
§5 · One Real Thing
Do one real thing
Not a demo question. Something you actually need done tonight. Three questions turn a vague ask into one Claude can answer well on the first try.
Goal
What do you actually want to walk away with?
What Claude needs to know
The stuff in your head that isn't in the question.
What the output should look like
Format, length, tone. Describe the deliverable.
This is where the volunteer's task goes live on screen.
§5.5 · The Robot Detector
Does it sound like a robot?
Claude's first draft can slide into LinkedIn-speak: you've seen the em-dashes, the "delve", the "it's not just X, it's Y". Tonight you learn to catch it, and two ways to fix it.
ROBOT DETECTORcounts the tells
Same request, three ways.
Same office move, same newsletter. The only thing that changes is the ask.
PROMPT
Write a short paragraph for the team newsletter about the office moving to the 4th floor.
CLAUDE
Exciting news, team! In today's fast-paced world, change is the only constant — and we're thrilled to announce that our office is moving to the 4th floor! This isn't just a change of scenery — it's a game-changer for how we collaborate, innovate, and connect. The new space is designed to foster creativity, elevate productivity, and unlock our full potential. With seamless access to natural light, vibrant breakout areas, and cutting-edge meeting rooms, we're truly taking it to the next level. It's important to note that moving day is Friday — so pack your desks by Thursday. In conclusion, the possibilities are endless — see you on the 4th floor!
100% robotpure robot
nobody said anything wrong. The ask was just unseasoned.
§6 · Skills
Skills, the door
You don't need this tonight. Just know the door is here, and what's behind it.
Generalist vs. specialist
Claude out of the box is a brilliant generalist. A skill is a package of instructions that turns it into a specialist for one job.
Skills you'll meet
- A slide-deck builder: turns your rough notes into a clean presentation.
- A spreadsheet analyst: reads your data and answers questions about it.
- A brand-voice writer: writes in your company's exact tone, every time.
- A meeting-notes summarizer: turns a messy transcript into decisions and next steps.
You already used one tonight
The Prompt Grader just above is exactly this: one tool, taught one job, built with Claude without writing a line of code. In Session 5, you build your own.
a skill is usually just a page of written instructions in a folder. that's the whole trick, and it's why you'll be able to build one.
§6.5 · Pick Your Claude
Same Claude, different rooms.
Everything tonight happened in one chat window. But Claude comes in a few shapes, and picking the right one for the job is half the trick. Here are five jobs you'll actually have, and which door to walk through.
THE DOOR FOR THIS JOB
Claude Cowork
Its Scheduled Tasks feature runs workflows on a clock, like pulling your inbox at 8:00 AM and summarizing it before you've had coffee.
AT A GLANCE
all five doors, one Claude. you already know how to talk to it.
tonight lived in Claude Chat. Cowork and Code get their own sessions.
§7 · Homework
Homework
One small thing before Thursday. It takes five minutes, and it isn't graded.
WHERE TO LOOK
- Right inside Claudeclaude.ai → Settings → Capabilitiesthe built-in shelf: flip on what fits and it's live in your next chat.
- Anthropic's skills librarythe official, open shelf: these already work on paid claude.ai plans.
- Awesome Claude Skillsbigger and wilder: a curated community list. Browse titles until one sounds like your job.
See you Thursday.
In Session 2, Claude meets your actual work week: documents, email, and the art of the follow-up.