What to try first

Not sure where to begin? Here are the things most people use Claude for in their first week — with prompts you can copy directly.

Draft documents, emails, and reports

Claude is fast at producing first drafts. Instead of starting from a blank page, describe what you need and let Claude write the structure. You then edit, rather than write from scratch — which is usually much quicker.

Try:

"Write a short email to a client letting them know their project is delayed by one week. Keep the tone professional but friendly."

"Turn these bullet points into a structured weekly status update."

"Write an executive summary for this report." (attach the file)

Analyse a file

Attach an Excel file, PDF, Word document, or image directly to any chat. Claude will read the content and work with it — summarising, extracting data, spotting patterns, or answering specific questions about it. No formulas, no pivot tables.

Try:

"Here is last month's sales report. What are the three biggest trends?" (attach the file)

"This spreadsheet has 500 rows. Which clients have not placed an order in the last 90 days?"

"Pull out all the payment terms from this contract and put them in a table."

Compare and decide

When you have multiple options — vendors, candidates, proposals, contracts — Claude can read them all and give you a structured comparison, so you are not doing it manually.

Try:

"Here are three vendor proposals. Compare them on price, delivery time, and warranty terms." (attach all three)

"I have two job candidates. Here are their CVs. Which one looks stronger for a project manager role, and why?"

Turn meeting notes into actions

Paste raw meeting notes or attach a transcript, and Claude will extract decisions, action items, owners, and deadlines — saving the 20 minutes it usually takes to write up.

Try:

"Here are my notes from today's meeting. Extract all action items, who owns each one, and the deadline."

"Summarise this meeting transcript in three paragraphs and list the key decisions made."

Research a company or client

Before a meeting, pitch, or call, Claude can pull together a quick overview of a company — what they do, recent news, key people. A few minutes instead of half an hour of manual searching.

Try:

"Research [company name] and give me a short brief: what they do, their size, any recent news, and who I should know before a sales call."

"What can you find about [person's name] at [company]?"

Create your own skill

If you find yourself doing the same task over and over — analysing the same type of report, processing a table in the same way, writing the same kind of update — you can turn it into a personal skill.

A skill saves your instructions so you don't have to repeat them every time. Next time, you just type /, select your skill, attach the file, and Claude already knows exactly what to do and how to format the output.

To create one, just describe the task to Claude and ask it to save it:

"I want to create a skill: every Monday I get a sales Excel file and I need a summary of total revenue by region, top 5 products, and any clients who dropped more than 20% week-on-week. Save this as a skill called 'Weekly sales review'."

From then on, typing /Weekly sales review and attaching the file is all it takes.

Tips

• Be specific — the more context you give, the better the output. "Write a proposal for Acme, a mid-size retail company, €10k budget, video production" beats "write a proposal"

• Attach the file — rather than pasting large amounts of text, drag and drop the file into the chat

• Iterate — if the first answer is not quite right, just say what needs to change. You don't need to start over

• Save what works — when you find a prompt that gives you a great result, turn it into a skill so it's always one slash command away

What to read next

• What is the Moterra + Claude bridge?

• Your first chat