Transcription
After receiving a massive number of updates over the past few weeks, Claude is now more powerful than ever before. But opening it up for the first time may feel confusing if you're relying on any Claude tutorial that's more than a week old. So this video will be the most up-to-date guide you need to get started with the new Claude. I'll cover everything that matters and show you step-by-step how to use Claude in a way that anyone can understand.
You can start by coming to claude.ai. If you don't have an account already, you can sign up for one here. Then you can take a look at the different pricing plans. The good news is that you can try out Claude for free. However, if you are going to use this seriously, I would suggest you at least sign up for their pro plan. That includes more usage than the free plan, and includes Claude Code, Claude Cowork, and Claude Design. We'll cover all of that in this video.
Once you have an account and you're logged in, your dashboard will look like this. Right here in the middle is the prompt box. This is where you can begin chatting with Claude. If you've ever used ChatGPT or Gemini in the past, this will work very similarly. You type in a prompt, send it along, and then you can chat back and forth with Claude.
But before you start really using this, there are some settings that I suggest you change. Come down to the bottom left, you should see your name here, and you can click on that. Then click on settings. We'll start by coming over to capabilities. You want to make sure that search and reference chats is toggled on. And if you see generate memory from chat history, you want that toggled on as well. That will allow Claude to learn about you as time goes on, so that the responses it sends you in the future are more personalized for you. If you've already been using an AI provider in the past, you can click right here where it says start import, and that will walk you through the process of importing your memory from that other AI provider.
Next, let's come on the left here where it says general. Down here, you'll see the instructions for Claude. This is where you can give Claude instructions and context that you want it to keep in mind across all of your chats. What I've put together for you is this template where you can fill in just some basic information about who you are, what you're going to use Claude for, how you want Claude to respond, and any other context you want it to know about you. You could spend just a couple of minutes filling this out, copy it, and then paste it into the instructions. Then Claude will know all of that about you and how you want it to act and respond when you're chatting with it. There are a lot of other settings in here, but the default settings for all those are more than fine, so we can leave those alone and then close the settings.
Next, look on the top left here, you should notice that you can toggle between home and code. Code is Claude code. This is designed for coders and developers. We're not going to be spending any time going over that in this video, but there are plenty of other videos on YouTube if you are a coder and developer as to how to use Claude code. So, we're going to stick inside of home.
Home is made up of two different parts. Inside the prompt box right here, we can see both of them. We have regular chat and we have co-work. Chat is where you go when you just want to have a back-and-forth conversation with Claude. For instance, here I asked Claude chat, "What is the best way to optimize my sleep?" It sent me a response. I asked it a follow-up question. It sent me another response, and we had this back-and-forth conversation. So, if the end goal is the chat itself, that is when you'd want to use Claude chat.
The other option is Claude co-work. Co-work is what you want to use when you want Claude to do work for you. For example, right here I told Claude co-work to put together a presentation for me about how to optimize sleep. I told it go out and find the most current research, look at some anecdotal reports, and put together an HTML report. And it not only gave me the information like it did in the chat, but it also put together this presentation for me. There's definitely some overlap between what you can do with chat and what you can do with Co-work, but it is important to know when you should use which one. The good news though is that if you mess this up and you accidentally start a chat in Co-work, or you have chat do some work for you, it's not going to matter too much. But the better that you get at delegating the right task to the right mode, the better the results are you are going to get out of Claude. That will just come with some time and experience.
What you'll also notice is that both chat and Co-work share the same dashboard. So if we come over here on the left under the recent section, you'll notice that right here is the chat that I just started. And we know that this is a chat because it has a chat bubble next to it. This is my Co-work task, and we know that because it has this checklist next to it. This will show you all your most recent chats and tasks sorted so that the one that you most recently interacted with appears at the top. For any of these, you can click on these three dots on the right and pin them so that they get moved up here and don't get lost. You can also click on these three dots and rename them or add them to a project.
We haven't talked about projects yet, but you can find those by clicking up here where it says projects. Projects are dedicated workspaces where you can organize chats, files, and instructions around one ongoing task or topic. For instance, right here I have one called invoices. If we open this up, you'll notice that right here on the right I have instructions that apply to any chat or Co-work task that I start from within this project. So, since this is the project that I use for creating invoices, these instructions tell it to always output invoices in a particular style. There's also a section here for memory. This is a memory system that exists across the project. So, as Claude learns more about the type of work I do inside my invoices project, it will update this memory so that's more helpful in the future. You can also add contacts, things like PDFs, documents, or other text that Claude can use as a reference when you work inside this project.
To set up a new project, you can click on the left where it says projects. Click on new project and give it a name. Then you can click on create project. And over here on the left, you can click on the plus icon, give it the project instructions, then click on the plus icon under context, and upload any files from your device, GitHub, or Google Drive. If you have some projects that you use quite frequently, you can return back to projects over here on the left and pin them so that they always appear on the left sidebar. So, you can click on these three dots, click on pin, and now over here on the left under pinned, you'll not only see your pinned tasks and chats, but you'll also see your pinned projects. This makes it a lot easier to return back to them later.
Now, like I said before, any chat or co-work task you start inside a project will stay inside this project. So, over here as this is working, we can return back to the sleep project and we can see that chat right here. But, you can also add other tasks and chats that you didn't start from within the project. Over here on the left is the task we started before. I can click on these three dots, hover over add to project, and choose the sleep one. So, now that appears right here. And then here is the chat that we had about sleep, and I'll do the same thing. So, what I want to point out for you here is not only that you can move things into projects, but also that you can have both chat chats and co-work tasks within projects.
I'll say in general, pretty much everything we're setting up here in Claude works with both chat and co-work. So, all the settings we went over before, the instructions for Claude, and the projects work with chat and co-work. Both of them also use the same connectors and skills. Connectors are how you connect Claude with third-party tools. If you click on the left here where it says customize, that will open up the settings, and then down here you can click on connectors. These are all the third-party connectors that you currently have added to your Claude account. You can click on the top right here and click on browse connectors to see new ones that you can add. Some of the most popular ones are of course Gmail, Google Drive, and Calendar, but you can come in here and find any tool that you commonly use and see if it's available as a connector. And what's great about that is now Claude will have access to the information inside that app or tool you use, and may even be able to write to that app or tool that you use.
Here for instance, if I close this out and return back to my connectors, you can see that Claude has access to my Gmail account, and it has access to my Notion account. So, let's say you use Notion with your team to keep track of different sales leads. I put together this mock CRM right here with all of the leads that we're following up on, along with some comments that some of my teammates have left, their email, the last time we've contacted them, etc. What I'm going to ask Claude to do is to look through my Gmail for any new contact that we've had with these leads and to bring that information into this CRM. For this type of task, I'm not going to use chat. I'm going to use co-work because I actually wanted it to go out and do some work for me. I will tell it go through my Gmail inbox, find any new updates from my leads that I have in my sales leads CRM in Notion. Then update the database, give me a report on what's new. And you can see now it is logging the email activity into the records on Notion and flagging the hottest deals with a comment. And it's doing all of that through the Notion connector. Now that it's done, it's giving me an entire report on everything that it found and opening up the CRM, we can see all those changes in here. So that's how connectors work. They quite literally connect Claude with third-party tools.
Now this workflow that we just went through is great. And I want to be able to do this same workflow again in the future. Now what I could do is start a new task in the future and just give it the exact same prompt that I gave it just a couple of minutes ago. But instead, I'm going to turn this into a skill. A skill is just a repeatable workflow and they're so easy to set up because I can just tell Claude here, now turn this into a skill so every time I ask you to update my lead CRM, you go through this workflow. Once you send it along, it will then create the skill for you. You can click right here to save the skill and then when you click on new on the top left, you can invoke the skill from either chat or from within co-work by typing forward slash and typing in the name of it, which was CRM, I believe. Yes, update lead CRM. So if I click on that and send it along, it will then execute that exact same workflow and I never have to repeat myself ever again.
But let's take this one step further because I want this exact workflow to run for me every morning automatically at 8:00 a.m. So, I will return back to the task where we first executed this workflow. And this time I will tell it run this for me every morning at 8:00 a.m. And sending that along, it will then set up the scheduled task which you can then approve. That will run every morning for me at 8:00 a.m. If I want to make any changes to it, I can click on the left here where it says scheduled. This will show me all my scheduled tasks and I can either pause them, edit them, or delete them.
Before I show you how Claude works on the desktop and mobile app, I want to quickly talk about usage limits and the different models. If you click on your name on the bottom left and open up the settings, over here on the left you can click on usage. In your account, you may see two or three of these different usage meters here. Everyone should see this one which shows your current session. This resets multiple times per day. If it reaches 100%, you're not going to be able to use Claude until it resets. You should also have a section with your weekly limits and you probably have one called all models. If this one fills up, you're not going to be able to use Claude until it resets for the week. All of these limits are currently shared between chat and co-work, but that may change in the future. There's also a limit meter down here for Fable. We'll talk about that in a moment because that may or may not be available by the time you're watching this video.
Closing this out, you can then come to the prompt box to see all of the models that are available to you. The one at the bottom, which is Haiku, is the weakest model, so it will go through your usage slower. The one at the top, which will be either Opus or Fable, is the most powerful model that you have access to, which will go through your usage faster. As things currently stand, I suggest that most people start by using Sonnet as the default. It's a good balance between intelligence and cost. For more complex tasks, you can then jump up to Opus. And if you find yourself barely getting through your usage limits every day and every week, you can make Opus your default model. Fable is a bit of an unknown right now because as of the recording of this video, it is included with your subscription. But Anthropic has said that in the future it won't be included with your subscription. Rumor has it that may change. Either way, it's the most expensive model, so you want to use it very sparingly.
Let's now jump over to the Claude desktop app. This is it right here. And the first thing you'll notice is that this looks almost identical to the web app. But under the surface, there are some special things going on here with co-work that unlock some capabilities that you do not get on the web. Now, chat is going to work exactly the same as it does on the web. But if you switch over to co-work, you'll notice that it now says here, do you want to work inside a project or a folder? That's because the desktop app has access to local files on your computer. With this selected, I can now click where it says choose a different folder. Now, I can select a folder on my computer. Here for instance, is a folder I have called budget. Inside of this, I have all of these files, these Excel files going over my budget, my expenses, my financial goals, all of that. So, selecting that, Claude co-work will now have access to those files that are inside that folder. I didn't need to attach them, I didn't need to upload them. It sees what is on my computer if I give it permission for that. And using that, I can now ask Claude co-work to create reports for me, documents, spreadsheets, presentations, using the information in those files. This can allow co-work to look at the files, edit them, or create new files directly inside my folder on my computer.
As this is working, let me show you something else. Anytime you start a new task using Claude co-work on the desktop app, you always want to check up here for this symbol. If you see a cloud, that means it is running in the cloud. So, if we return back to the web app, here we go. We're back in the web app. Over here on the left, you can see that under recents, I have that task that I just started on my desktop app. It is available in the cloud and it's still accessing my local files, even though I'm viewing and interacting with it here on the web. That will work as long as your computer is on and the Claude desktop app is open. That is particularly helpful when you use the Claude mobile app. Opening it up, you can use it with regular Claude chat here and opening up the side menu, you can see all your recent Claude chats here. But if you click on co-work, that will show you all the co-work tasks that are running in the cloud. Here's the one that we just started. Opening this up, you can see the response that it sent when it was finished and here's the report. So, this means that you can start a task on the desktop app and see the results and finish and continue the conversation on your phone. Again, as long as your computer is on and the Claude desktop app is open.
One final point I want to clarify because I don't want there to be any confusion here. When you start a new co-work task using the Claude desktop app, you will be able to access that task from any other device like your phone, if the task that you start is completely cloud-based. In other words, if I just come in here and tell it to go through my Gmail and then to pull the information from Gmail into Notion, all of that is cloud-based. So, I'll be able to access it on my phone even if I close my laptop screen before it's finished completing that task. However, if I run a task like this one where I had it accessing local files on my computer, I would have to start the task and leave the computer on with the Claude desktop app open in order to be able to access that task from my phone. The distinction here is is it accessing files on your computer? If it is, then it needs that connection and your computer needs to be on in order for you to be able to communicate to it with your phone or from the web app.
So, that is a new Claude. If you watch this entire video, you've already mastered 90% of what it can do. Now, many creators will lock a course like this behind a paywall, but I put all my content for free on YouTube because I want everyone to learn how to master these AI tools. All I ask in return is for you to give this video a thumbs up and leave a comment letting me know that you appreciate videos like this. Honestly, I read every single comment and it's what motivates me to keep making more content.
The final piece of Claude that we haven't covered yet is Claude design. And that's because it's an entirely different beast. And since I already made an entire video about it, I'll just link that for you right here. You can use Claude design to create prototypes, slides, documents, wireframes, or animations. You can see an example of one of those right here. So, if you want to learn how you can do that yourself, click on this video and I'll see you there in 1 second. Bye for now.