⚡ You're Only Using 30% of Claude AI 🔓 The Part of Claude Most People Never Find

Happy Thursday!

Welcome to another issue of HOW TO // AI! We're glad you made it!

Here's what we've got for ya:

Let's get started!

Most people open Claude, type a message, and get an answer. That's it. That's the whole workflow.

And honestly? It works. Until you find out you've been using a Swiss Army knife as a butter knife — and the other blades were there the whole time.

Claude has three distinct modes built for completely different kinds of work. Most people only ever stumble onto one. Here's what the other 70% looks like.

Chat is what most people use Claude for.

This is the default — open Claude.ai, type a message, get a response. Perfect for quick questions, one-off writing tasks, brainstorming, and anything where you don't need Claude to remember context between sessions.

Best for: Drafting emails, answering questions, summarizing something you paste in, quick rewrites.

The limitation: Every new chat starts from zero. Claude doesn't know who you are, what you're working on, or what you told it last Tuesday. You're constantly re-briefing Claude on who you are and what you are looking for.

THIS is where Claude starts to feel like a real assistant

Projects is Claude's memory layer. You set up a workspace — give it a name, upload key documents, and write a set of custom instructions — and Claude remembers all of it every time you open that project.

No more typing "I'm a marketing manager at a SaaS company" at the start of every chat. No more re-uploading your resume every time you want help with job applications. You set the context once, and it's always there.

Best for: Ongoing work — job searching, a side project, content creation, anything you return to week after week.

Example: Create a "Job Search" project, upload your resume, and tell Claude your target role and industry. Every conversation in that project starts with Claude already knowing all of it.

Cowork is the one almost nobody knows about yet

This is where things get genuinely different. Cowork lives in the Claude desktop app (Mac and Windows), and instead of you uploading files to Claude — Claude connects directly to a folder on your computer.

You give it a task, step away, and come back to finished work sitting in your folder. Not a draft in a chat window. Actual files, organized, formatted, and ready to use.

Best for: Multi-step tasks that would normally take you an hour — organizing a folder of documents, pulling together a report from multiple sources, processing a batch of files, building a research summary with real deliverables.

Example: Point Cowork at a folder of meeting notes and say "summarize each one, pull out all action items, and create a single master task list." Come back in 10 minutes. It's done.

The key difference: in Chat and Projects, Claude responds. In Cowork, Claude works.

Okay, full transparency — we said three modes. There's technically a fourth.

Claude Code is the developer version of Cowork. It lives in your terminal (the black command-line window that makes most people nervous) and lets developers hand off entire coding projects to Claude — bug fixes, code migrations, building features from scratch.

You probably don't need it right now. But here's why it matters to know about:

Claude Code is what made the tech world sit up and take notice of Claude in the first place. It's been called the best AI coding tool available, and it's the reason Anthropic built Cowork — because so many non-developers saw what it could do and wanted the same power for their regular work.

So if you ever decide to learn a little coding, or you work alongside developers, Claude Code is worth knowing exists. And if you're already using Cowork and loving it — you're essentially using the same engine under the hood, just with a friendlier interface on top.

The short version: Chat → Projects → Cowork → Claude Code. You're building toward something real.

Most people reading this should start with Projects if you haven't already — it's available on all paid Claude plans and takes about 5 minutes to set up. Cowork requires the desktop app and a paid plan, but it's worth downloading just to try.

The full setup guide — including custom instruction templates, a step-by-step Cowork walkthrough, and a cheat sheet for which mode to use when — is all in this week's free download 👇

✅ Step-by-step Projects setup — how to create your first project, what to include in custom instructions, and what to upload
✅ Custom instruction templates — copy-paste starting points for 5 common roles (job seeker, writer, small business owner, student, manager)
✅ Cowork quick-start guide — how to download the desktop app and run your first task
✅ Mode cheat sheet — exactly when to use Chat, Projects, and Cowork
✅ 10 starter tasks — real things to try in each mode this week

→ Grab the Claude Setup Guide here (Free Notion template — just duplicate and use)

Which mode are you using most right now? Reply and let me know — I read every email and I'd love to know where people are starting from!

The Rundown: On February 25th, Perplexity launched "Computer" — not a physical device, but a cloud-based AI system that takes a goal you describe and works on it for hours, days, or even months until it's done. It's less like a chatbot and more like handing a project to a team and walking away.

Details:

Takeaway: This is the most concrete example yet of what AI "doing the work" actually looks like — not just answering questions, but running the whole project from start to finish. For most HOW TO AI readers, it's worth watching rather than jumping on right now (the $200/month price tag is real). But understanding what's coming helps you build toward it — which is exactly why getting your Claude Projects and Cowork setup right today puts you ahead of the curve.

📸 BetterPic — Still using a blurry selfie as your LinkedIn photo? BetterPic turns 8 casual photos into studio-quality 4K professional headshots in under an hour — no photographer, no studio, no awkward poses. Choose from 150+ styles (corporate, creative, casual), swap backgrounds and outfits, and get photos that actually look like you, just a polished version. Over 90% of users say the results match or beat a real photo shoot, at a fraction of the cost. Get your headshots!

📱 Anything — Ever had an app idea but no idea how to build it? Anything is an AI agent that builds full mobile and web apps from a simple chat description — design, backend, database, payments, hosting, and App Store submission included. Just describe what you want, go step by step, and it builds it. No code required, no developers needed. If you've been sitting on a side project idea, this is the fastest path from "what if" to live app. Start building!

🎙️ Wispr Flow — What if you could talk to your computer the way you talk to a person? Wispr Flow is AI voice dictation that works across every app — emails, docs, Slack, Claude itself — and types 4x faster than your hands can. It doesn't just transcribe either; it understands context and formats your words correctly for wherever you're typing. Used by over 270 Fortune 500 teams. Free tier available. Try it free

Have a question you want answered? Email [email protected] and you just might be featured in an upcoming issue!

This newsletter is your starter kit for mastering AI with confidence. We keep things simple, show real examples, and focus on quick wins you can repeat.

Stay curious, stick with it, and watch your skills grow week by week!

Until next time :)

— David

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