Your First 30 Minutes With Claude

Most people download Claude, type a question, get a mid answer, and quietly decide it's overhyped. The problem was never Claude. It's that they never set it up to know them. Here are the 4 things to do before you type a single real prompt — 30 minutes, once, and everything after it gets better.

Out of the box, Claude is a genius with amnesia. Brilliant, fast, and completely blank on who you are, what you sell, how you talk, and what you're working on. So it hands you generic work — and you go back to doing it yourself.

The people who "get" AI didn't find a magic prompt. They spent one setup session making it know them. That's the whole gap. These 4 moves close it.

Open the desktop app (claude.com/download) and find the Cowork tab in the left sidebar. That's the part that actually runs your business — not the chat window everyone stops at. Make one folder called Claude-Cowork with four folders inside: PROJECTS, TEMPLATES, OUTPUTS, and ABOUT. This is the home Claude works out of. Finished files land in OUTPUTS instead of getting lost in a scroll of chat.

This is the step that changes everything, and it's the one people skip. Inside your ABOUT folder, make a file called about-me.md and tell Claude who it's working for. Not a diary — a briefing. Paste this prompt into Claude and let it interview you if you get stuck:

I'm setting you up to work for me. Ask me the 8 questions you most need answered to do great work for my business without me re-explaining every time — my role, what I sell, who it's for, my goals this quarter, how I talk, my non-negotiables. Then write it all up as a clean about-me file I can save.

Save what it writes as about-me.md in your ABOUT folder. You just did the single highest-leverage thing most Claude users never do.

Back in Claude, click Add Folder and point it at Claude-Cowork. Pick the latest model with Extended Thinking turned on. Now it can read your context before it answers. Then give it your first real job — and notice the ending, because it's what separates a wall of guesses from usable work:

Read my ABOUT folder first so you know who you're working for. I want [the task] done to [what "done" looks like]. Before you execute, ask me any questions you need to get it right the first time.

"Ask me before you execute" is the cheat code. It turns Claude from a machine that guesses into a teammate that checks.

Go to Customize → Browse Skills and install one that fits what you actually do — marketing, sales, ops, admin. Just one. Then type / in any chat to see your new commands. A skill is a saved workflow: instead of re-writing instructions every time, you run one command and Claude already knows the steps.

You don't need ten. You need one you'll use this week. Master that, add the next one later.

If you find yourself re-explaining your business to Claude, stop and put it in a file. Setup once, used forever. That's the difference between using AI and having it actually installed.