Your AI resource library
A growing library of guides, prompts and skills for using AI well, no code needed. One idea runs through it all: everything is context. It reads as a story: start at the top, and each step hands Claude more of yours.
The 4Ds of AI Fluency
The four moves behind every good result; ten minutes here and everything after it lands better. In a hurry? Start at Claude 101 and come back for the framework.
Claude 101
Start here: what Claude actually is, what it is made of, and when to chat versus hand over a whole job.
Claude 101
The six building blocks for working with Claude: Projects, Skills and Artifacts to set up, then Connectors, Scheduled tasks and Dispatch to put it to work. Read it straight after AI Fluency.
Open → BeginnerChat vs Cowork: what’s the difference?
The question that comes up most. Both are powerful, so what is the difference? You steer Chat, you delegate to Cowork.
Open →How to prompt
You get out what you put in: a prompt is context you type, SDS is how you type it well, and when it’s too messy to type, let Claude interview you first.
How to Prompt
The basics of asking: set the stage, name the task, show what good looks like. How to steer when the first answer misses. And when a thought is too messy to type, how to let Claude interview you first.
Open → BeginnerThe Gym
Live drills, not prompt templates. Nineteen ways to feel the difference between a weak move and a strong one, on your own real work. Warm-ups through to a graduation drill.
Train → BeginnerGeneral Instructions: the hardened template
Standing instructions that make your AI take a position, check its facts and say “I don’t know” instead of guessing. The full template, free on the page, installed in about a minute.
Install →Real examples
Real examples you can copy, not just read: pick one task, take it off your plate this week, and put a number on what it saved you.
Use Cases
Real use cases from Anthropic’s own library, curated for business and grouped by kind of work. What people actually do with Claude.
Open → BeginnerThe living dashboard
Build a one-file to-do dashboard on your own machine, in a style you pick. Six style cards, one build prompt, and a piece of personal software that is yours.
Have a go → BeginnerClaude Design
The tool every media asset this site ships is made with. What it is, when to reach for it over Chat and Cowork, and the exact prompt behind the page’s own hero, ready to copy for your own work.
Open → BeginnerThe SOP Generator
Messy notes in, a clean SOP out. Copy-paste prompts that write up how you do your work, then improve it or turn it into a video. The move I used to build my own teaching resources.
Open →Context is King
A project is context you store: the step where you stop retyping yourself and give Claude the whole library.
Projects: context you store
A return visit to Claude 101, now that you have prompts behind you. Same section, new eyes: the building block that ends re-uploading, knowledge and standing instructions Claude reads in every chat inside the project.
Revisit → BeginnerGive it the library
The library section of Chat vs Cowork, worth a second pass: a project holds far more than most people feed it. The scale, the shelves, and why two pages in means generic out.
Revisit →Advanced skills
Write the process down once and Claude runs it the same way forever: seven skills to download, plus the ones I actually run every day. The Leverage Ladder’s golden rule still applies: the lowest level that does the job wins.
Multi-agent orchestration
Hand one helper a whole job first, brief it like a hire with a definition of done, then learn to run a team.
The Translator
Describe your job in plain words. It interviews you, names what good looks like, and writes the prompt you could not.
Open → AdvancedThe Leverage Ladder
The axis this module climbs, as one picture: how AI gets more useful, from a single prompt up to helpers that do a whole job for you. Its golden rule: the lowest level that does the job wins.
See the ladder → AdvancedThe Six Levels cheat sheet
One printable page: which level for which job, the tell, an example, and when not to use each. The Translator’s companion, for the moment you are choosing.
Open → AdvancedSubagents
Delegate to Claude the way you delegate to people. What the context window is, when to hand work to a helper, and the brief that comes back done.
Open → AdvancedGood loops + the receipts
Make AI check its own work and get genuinely better, not just done. The studies that back it up live here too, sources included.
Open → AdvancedThe 4D Build
A skill you run to actually ship something with AI. Walk one idea through the four Ds until it is real, then keep the result.
Open → AdvancedMission Control
The top of the Leverage Ladder, made visible: one mission fanned out to a team of agents, checks landing live. The four Ds, as instruments.
Open →Second brain
The top step of the context ladder: a private set of files your AI reads at the start of every session, so it knows your work better every week. Ask me about this one in a lesson.
Your second brain
The summit: one place per fact, a log whose lessons graduate into instructions, and a weekly review that keeps it honest. The one we build together in lessons.
Open → AdvancedThe monthly memory audit
A second brain rots quietly. The one prompt, run on a date, that checks yours is still telling the truth before you act on it.
Open →Building software in VS Code
A change of road after the summit: the desktop app is where you delegate, VS Code is where you ship, and this is where you start building for real.
How to create anything
The seven step recipe for kicking off any project in VS Code with Claude Code. New folder, PRD, plan mode, then build. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.
Open → BeginnerThe AI Building Course
Eleven projects, built one at a time. Each one comes with a prompt you paste into Claude Code, which fetches the project and coaches you through it. Start with API keys, finish with your own command centre.
Open →Also on the shelf
Not steps in the story, still worth shelf space: the tools I build, how we build them, the questions every lesson asks, and one tool from outside the Claude family worth knowing.
Gemini Notebook
Google’s answer-only-from-my-sources tool, the one it renamed from NotebookLM. Three panels, what it knows, what you ask, what it makes, and the three prompts that turn it from a summariser into a critic.
Open → BeginnerFree tools + starter files
Small finished apps you set up in minutes, like a live price tracker, plus starter files to drop into your own work. A tool, not a command.
Open → AdvancedHow We Build
One prompt that installs a professional build method into your agent: spec freeze, evals, sessions, red-teaming. You paste it; your agent holds you to it.
Open → BeginnerFAQ
The questions that come up in nearly every lesson, answered once: API keys, usage limits, data safety, Pro vs Max, and more.
Open →Worth your time
A short, vetted shortlist beats the firehose. Start at the top, stop when you have enough.
More stars mean start here. ★★★start, ★★go deeper, ★browse.
Straight from the people who make Claude: what is new, what each surface does, and how to use it well. Trust this over any third party for Claude facts.
The official documentation. Dry but reliable when you need the real answer on a feature, a limit, or how something actually works.
Clear walkthroughs of AI automation and agent workflows for people who are not engineers. Good for seeing a whole build end to end.
Talks, feature demos, and research explainers from Anthropic itself. Slower-moving than the news channels but authoritative.
Want our own worked-through findings rather than other people’s videos? The receipts on the loops page hold the studies we have checked ourselves, with the sources.
New prompts, loops and guides land here often, so check back. Want it set up around your own work? Book a free chat and we can do it together: calendly.com/seanmccloskey/30min.
The hardened template is out
My General Instructions template is now free on its own page. Leave your email and I will send it as a ready-to-paste file, plus every future version: this template evolves, subscribers get the new versions.
McCloskey.ai · Resources. Built for people who want to use AI well without writing code.