Meet Claude.
Before you automate anything, you need a working understanding of what Claude is, where you can talk to it, and how to ask for what you want.
What is Claude?
Claude is an AI assistant built by Anthropic. Think of it as an extremely capable colleague who has read most of the public internet, can hold a long conversation, write, analyze, and use tools you give it. It does not browse autonomously, store private memories about you between sessions unless you turn that on, or take real world actions without your permission.
For your team, that translates into four practical jobs Claude does well right now: drafting and rewriting, summarizing and extracting, analyzing structured information like spreadsheets and PDFs, and walking you through unfamiliar work step by step.
Your first conversation
The fastest way to feel productive is to give Claude a real task you would have done yourself in the next hour. Open Claude in your browser or desktop app and try this:
Getting better results
Most people undersell themselves to Claude. Better prompts share four things: who you are, what you want produced, who it is for, and what good looks like. You do not need to be formal about it.
From helper to thought partner
The pattern above gets you clean drafts. The pattern below gets you a sparring partner. This is the CRIT framework from Geoff Woods (author of The AI-Driven Leader): Context, Role, Interview, Task. The move that changes everything is the Interview step. Instead of giving Claude every detail up front, you let Claude ask you the questions a sharp consultant would ask before forming a recommendation.
A worked example. You are about to renegotiate a vendor contract and you want a thought partner, not a draft email.
Chat, Cowork, Code
Claude lives in three places once you install the desktop app. Pick the right surface for the work in front of you.
- Chat. A blank conversation. Best for thinking, drafting, and quick analysis. This is where most people spend most of their time.
- Cowork. Claude with access to a folder on your computer. It can read your files, build outputs, and save them back. Best when the work involves real documents you have on disk.
- Code. A developer-focused mode that sits inside a code editor and works on software. You can ignore this unless you write or maintain code.
Organizing your work and your knowledge.
One off conversations are useful. The leverage shows up when you stop starting from scratch. Projects, Artifacts, and Skills are the three tools that turn Claude into a system.
Projects
A Project is a dedicated workspace inside Claude with its own instructions, its own files, and its own conversation history. Use one Project per recurring lane of work: a customer, a service line, an ongoing initiative.
Artifacts
An Artifact is a finished thing Claude builds in a side panel: a document, a one pager, an interactive calculator, a small web page. You can edit, download, and reuse it. It is how you turn a conversation into a deliverable.
- Ask for a "one page brief" or "scoring rubric" or "interactive checklist" and Claude will spin one up.
- Iterate by telling Claude what to change. The Artifact updates in place.
- Share the link with a teammate or download as a file when you are done.
Skills
A Skill is a reusable instruction set Claude loads on demand. Anthropic ships skills for working with PDFs, spreadsheets, slide decks, and more. You can write your own, or have your coach write them, to capture how your firm wants specific work done.
Connecting to where work lives.
So far Claude has been working with what you paste in. The next step is connecting the tools where your real work lives, so Claude can pull the right context without you copying anything.
Connecting your tools
Connectors let Claude reach into apps you already use: Google Drive, Gmail, Calendar, HubSpot, QuickBooks, Slack, Notion, and many more. You authorize each connection once. Claude only uses it when the task asks for it.
Enterprise search
Once a few connectors are live, you can ask Claude questions that span them. "Where did we land on pricing for the Suntec project?" Claude will search the right inbox thread, the right Drive folder, and the right Slack channel and bring you the answer with sources.
Treat it like having an assistant who can read everything you can read, just much faster.
Research mode
Research mode is for the deeper questions. You give Claude a topic, it goes out and reads broadly, and returns a structured brief with citations. Use it when the work justifies an actual report, not a quick reply.
- "Who are the top three commercial GCs hiring superintendents in metro Phoenix right now, and what are they paying?"
- "What does the new Maricopa County permitting workflow look like, and where do most projects get stuck?"
- "Brief me on the AIA Arizona convention agenda and which sessions matter for an ops audience."
Putting it all together.
The pieces are simple. The compound effect comes from picking one workflow, building it well, and then doing it again next week. A few patterns we see working in the field.
Use cases by role
Where Claude pays back its first hour, sorted by who is sitting at the keyboard. Pick the row that looks most like your week and start there.
Other ways to work with Claude
Once your team is comfortable, the surface area opens up. A few directions worth knowing about, even if they are not your first move:
- Voice and mobile. The Claude mobile app handles dictation well. Useful for windshield time and jobsite walks.
- Browser use. Claude in Chrome can drive a browser for you on tasks like form filling and research. Treat it like a junior assistant: useful, supervised.
- Custom agents. When a workflow is stable enough to repeat, POLR can package it as a dedicated agent that runs the same playbook every time.
The next ninety days.
You have the foundation. The next 90 days is about turning these tools into one or two repeatable workflows your team uses every week.
Your week one homework
Going deeper
- Anthropic Claude 101: the official free course this guide is paired with. Earn a certificate.
- Claude resources and courses: the full library from Anthropic.
- Claude Help Center: feature reference and troubleshooting.