Week 2

Become a Claude Power User

Last week you built your AI coach. This week I'm going to show you features that launched this month that most people don't even know exist yet — including one from 3 days ago.

~90 minHands-onDemos + follow along

Let's see how the AI coach held up in the real world.

Community Wins

Before we dive in — who used their AI coach this week? What did you use it for? What surprised you?

Share in the room. The best use cases usually aren't the ones you'd predict — they come from people applying the coach to problems they deal with every day.

"The people who get the most out of AI aren't the ones with the best prompts — they're the ones who actually use it consistently. If you used your coach 3+ times this week, you're already ahead of 95% of people."

Quick Recap — Week 1

01The Glazer Problem — AI defaults to agreeable, unhelpful responses unless you tell it otherwise
02Prompting Foundations — Context, Role, Task, Constraints, Format
03Your AI Coach — Personal context + coaching rules = an AI that challenges you

Tonight we go deeper. Same AI, way more capability. Let's get into it.

Not all models are created equal. Picking the right one for the job saves time and gets better results.

❌ Wasting tokens

Using Opus for every quick question, burning through your usage limit by lunch

✅ Strategic usage

Using Sonnet for fast tasks, switching to Opus only when you need deep reasoning

Sonnet vs Opus — Side by Side

Sonnet

Fast, efficient, great for 90% of daily tasks. Emails, brainstorming, quick analysis, first drafts. Your everyday workhorse.

Opus

Deep reasoning, nuanced writing, complex analysis. Use for strategy, long documents, or when Sonnet's output feels shallow.

Extended Thinking — Live Demo

Opus has a feature most people don't know about: Extended Thinking. Instead of answering immediately, it reasons through the problem step by step — like watching someone think out loud before giving you an answer.

Watch what happens when we give Opus a real business decision with Extended Thinking turned on:

Opus — Extended Thinking
I run a 12-person consulting firm. We've been offered a partnership with a larger firm — they want to absorb us as a division. We'd keep our team but lose the brand. The offer is 2.5x revenue. Should I take it?
Before I give you a framework for this decision, let me think through the dimensions most founders miss: The 2.5x multiple needs context. Is that 2.5x trailing twelve months or projected? What's the earn-out structure — are you getting 2.5x upfront or is it contingent on 3 years of performance targets? Because a "2.5x deal" with a 60% earn-out is really a 1x deal with lottery tickets attached. Brand loss is the hidden cost. Your brand is what lets you charge premium rates and attract talent. As a division of BigCo, you inherit their reputation — good and bad. Ask yourself: would your top 3 clients have hired BigCo directly? If not, you're giving away your moat. What problem are you actually solving? If this is about scale and resources — there might be cheaper ways. If it's about personal burnout from running a firm — selling won't fix that, it'll just change the flavor of exhaustion. If it's about de-risking — that's the strongest argument, but price it honestly. My recommendation: get a third-party valuation before you negotiate. And ask their 3 most recent acquisitions how year 2 went.

"Extended Thinking is for decisions you'd normally agonize over for days. Let Opus do the agonizing in 30 seconds, then use its output as a starting point for your own thinking."

Rule of Thumb

Start with Sonnet — it handles most tasks well and responds fast
Switch to Opus — when the output feels shallow, when stakes are high, or when you need genuine analysis
Turn on Extended Thinking — for complex decisions, strategy work, or anything you'd want a second opinion on

Claude has capabilities most people never discover. We're going to fix that right now.

Memory

Claude can remember things about you across conversations — your name, role, preferences, how you like responses formatted. It's not just nice-to-have: it means you stop repeating yourself every time you start a new chat.

How to see it: Open Claude → Settings → Memory. You'll see everything Claude has remembered about you. You can edit or delete any of it.

Why it matters: Memory is what turns Claude from a generic tool into your tool. The more it knows about you, the less prompting you need to do. Tell it your role, your industry, your communication style — and it will adapt automatically in every future conversation.

Projects — Build Your Business Brain (or Personal Knowledge Hub)

This is the main hands-on exercise. Projects let you create dedicated workspaces with uploaded documents and custom instructions. Think of it as giving Claude a briefing packet it reads before every conversation. Whether you're running a business, managing work projects, or organizing personal research — Projects give you a dedicated space where Claude already knows the context.

Follow along now
Open Claude and create a new Project. We're building this together.
Open Claude.ai →
ACreate a Project — Click "Projects" in the sidebar → New Project. Name it something like "Business Brain," "[Your Company] Strategy," or "My Work Brain"
BUpload your docs — Drag in 2-3 key documents you work with regularly. For business owners: a business plan, financial summary, or client proposal. For everyone else: work documents, study materials, project notes, or personal research you want Claude to know about
CSet custom instructions — Tell Claude who you are, what this project is for, and how you want it to respond
Example project instructions (business)
You are my strategic business advisor for [Company Name].

You have access to my business documents — reference them when answering questions.

When I ask for analysis:
- Start with the key insight, not a summary
- Flag risks I might be overlooking
- Connect your answer to the specific numbers and facts in my uploaded docs
- Be direct — I don't need encouragement, I need clarity

My role: [your role]
My top priorities this quarter: [list them]
Example project instructions (non-business)
You are my personal knowledge assistant for [project/subject].

You have access to my uploaded documents — reference them when answering questions.

When I ask for help:
- Start with the most relevant information from my docs
- Point out connections I might be missing
- Be specific — reference the actual content in my uploaded files
- Keep it practical and actionable

My context: [your role — e.g. student, employee, researcher]
What I'm working on: [describe your goal]

Now test it: ask your project a question about your documents. Notice how it references your actual files — not generic advice.

Artifacts

When Claude generates a document, report, or piece of content, it can create an Artifact — a standalone panel that appears next to the conversation. You can iterate on it, edit it, and download it without losing the chat context.

Try it: Ask Claude to "Create a one-page executive summary of [topic]" — it'll generate it as an artifact you can refine in real time.

Inline Visualizations

Paste numbers into Claude and ask for a chart. That's it. No spreadsheet, no chart tool, no formatting. Just paste your data and say "visualize this."

Instant Chart
Q1: $142K, Q2: $189K, Q3: $156K, Q4: $221K. Visualize this as a bar chart and tell me what stands out.
[Claude generates an interactive bar chart as an artifact] Two things jump out: Q4 was your strongest quarter by 17% over Q2, which is a good sign. But Q3 dropped 17% from Q2 — what happened? If that's seasonal, fine. If it's churn or a lost client, the Q4 recovery might be masking an underlying issue worth investigating.

Styles

You can set a default response style so Claude writes the way you want — every time. Go to Settings → Styles. Choose from presets or create your own. This changes how Claude writes across all conversations.

Good candidates for custom styles: "Be concise, use bullet points, no fluff." Or: "Write in a professional but warm tone, use analogies to explain complex ideas." Whatever matches how you actually communicate.

This feature launched days ago. Most people don't know it exists yet. It changes what's possible.

New — launched this week

Dispatch lets you send tasks to Claude from your phone — and Claude executes them on your desktop in real time. You're at lunch, on a walk, in a meeting. You think of something. You open Claude on your phone, send the task, and by the time you get back to your desk, it's done.

Live Demo

Watch this. I'm going to:

01Open Dispatch on my phone
02Scan the QR code to connect to Claude Desktop
03Send a task from my phone
04Watch Claude execute it on my desktop — in real time

"This is the moment it stops being a chatbot and starts being an assistant. You give it work. It does the work. You come back to finished results."

Practical Examples

📧

Compile Unread Emails

"Go through my unread emails, summarize the important ones, and draft responses for the top 3 that need action."

📁

Organize Downloads

"Sort my Downloads folder — move documents to Documents, images to Photos, delete anything older than 30 days."

✉️

Draft Client Emails

"Draft follow-up emails to the 3 clients I met with this week. Reference the meeting notes in my Documents folder."

Set It Up — If You Have Pro + Desktop

If you have Claude Pro and the Claude Desktop app installed, let's get you set up right now:

01Install Claude Desktop — if you haven't already, download it from claude.ai/download
02Open Claude on your phone — the iOS or Android app
03Tap Dispatch — it will show a QR code scanner
04Scan the code on your desktop — Claude Desktop will show a pairing code
05Send your first task — start simple: "List the 5 most recent files in my Downloads folder"
Dispatch — From Phone
Check my Downloads folder for any PDFs from this week. Move them to a new folder called "March Docs" and give me a list of what you moved.
Done. I found 4 PDFs in your Downloads folder from this week: 1. Q1_Financial_Review.pdf → moved to March Docs 2. Client_Proposal_Draft.pdf → moved to March Docs 3. Insurance_Renewal.pdf → moved to March Docs 4. Team_Offsite_Agenda.pdf → moved to March Docs All 4 files are now in ~/Documents/March Docs/. Your Downloads folder is cleaned up.

Set it and forget it. Claude can run tasks on a schedule — and interact with your computer like a human would.

Scheduled Tasks — /schedule

Tell Claude to do something on a recurring schedule. Every morning, every Monday, once a week — whatever cadence you need. The syntax is simple:

Example: Morning briefing
/schedule every weekday at 8am

Compile my morning briefing:
- Check my calendar for today's meetings
- Summarize any important emails from overnight
- List my top 3 priorities based on what's on my plate
- Flag anything that needs immediate attention

Save the briefing as a note so I can review it with coffee.

That's it. Every weekday morning, Claude runs this task automatically. You wake up to a briefing that's already written.

Computer Use — Quick Demo

Computer Use lets Claude interact with your desktop the way a human would: opening apps, clicking buttons, typing into fields, navigating browsers. It can see your screen and take actions on it.

🖥️

Open Apps

Claude can launch applications, switch between windows, and navigate menus — just like you would.

🌐

Use Browsers

Navigate to websites, fill out forms, extract information from web pages, take screenshots of results.

Chain Actions

Combine multiple steps into one task: open a spreadsheet, extract data, paste it into an email, send it.

The Full Loop

Here's where it gets powerful. These three features combine:

"Schedule triggers Dispatch. Dispatch triggers Computer Use. You set it up once and Claude handles it autonomously — every day, every week, whatever cadence you choose."

❌ Manual Monday

Every Monday morning you manually check emails, compile a summary, update a spreadsheet, and send a team update. Takes 45 minutes.

✅ Automated Monday

You set up a scheduled task: every Monday at 7am, Claude checks your email, compiles the summary, updates the spreadsheet, and drafts the team update. You just review and send.

Start with one scheduled task. The morning briefing is the easiest win. Once you trust the output, add more.

Individual features are useful. Combining them is where the leverage gets absurd.

Workflow Combos

📋

Contract Analysis

Project + Uploaded Docs. Upload a contract to a Project. Ask: "What should concern me? What's missing? What are the non-standard terms?" Claude references the actual document.

📱

Mobile Meeting Prep

Dispatch from Phone. Walking to a meeting? Send a Dispatch task: "Brief me on [client] — pull from our last 3 conversations and any docs in the project." Read it on your phone.

📊

Weekly Summary

Scheduled Task + Artifacts. Every Friday at 4pm, Claude compiles your week: tasks completed, decisions made, priorities for next week. Delivered as a clean artifact you can share.

Let's Build One Live

Pick one of these workflows — or come up with your own — and let's build it right now. The goal: leave tonight with at least one automated workflow that saves you real time next week.

Already built your coach?
Turn it into a Project with your business docs. That's your most powerful workflow.
Open Coach Builder →

Questions? Anything we covered tonight that you want to go deeper on? Let's talk through it.

Homework

01Build a Project — Upload at least 3 business documents and set custom instructions. Use it for a real task this week.
02Try Dispatch — If you have Pro + Desktop, send at least one task from your phone. Start simple.
03Set a scheduled task — The morning briefing is the easiest first win. Try it for one week.

Week 3 Preview

Next week we connect Claude to the rest of your digital life. MCP integrations — Model Context Protocol. This is how Claude talks directly to Gmail, Google Calendar, Notion, Google Drive, and more.

Instead of copy-pasting information between tools, Claude will live inside your tools. It reads your calendar to prep for meetings. It checks your email to prioritize your morning. It updates your Notion workspace based on what you tell it.

"Week 1 you built the brain. Week 2 you gave it hands. Week 3 you connect it to everything."

From the Class

Questions Students Asked

Real questions from the live session — the stuff that doesn't fit neatly into the lesson.

Ready to go deeper?

Put these features to work this week. Build a Project, try Dispatch, set a schedule. Come back next week and we'll connect Claude to everything.