STEP 02 of 05 · The AI Operator Series
Working With Claude
A Claude AI Guide to Projects, Research and Writing in Your Own Voice
Turn Claude into a capable coworker: a Project that knows your business, a voice file that sounds like you, and research with sources you can open.
The reader
Who is Working With Claude for?
People who already ask an assistant a few questions a week and want it carrying real projects: consultants, marketers, writers, operators and small-business owners.
By the last page
What will you be able to do after this book?
- Build a Claude Project with standing instructions, a facts file and a voice file, then prove with a canary test that every chat reads them.
- Upload long documents and spreadsheets and get summaries, comparisons and totals that cite their source and reconcile.
- Run research that comes back with citations, and audit three of them at the source before you rely on the answer.
- Connect one service with the permissions you choose, and keep drafting separate from sending.
- Turn your best prompt into a skill, then hand Claude a long job and a scheduled task under written limits.
15 chapters, in order
What is inside Working With Claude?
Chapter 1: A Capable Coworker
Where Claude runs, which plan to start on and why, the merged conversation that answers or works on a task, Anthropic's outcome brief mapped onto Job, Material, Shape and Check, and choosing a model and effort level. Then run one saved prompt in ChatGPT and Claude side by side.
Chapter 2: Read the Whole File
Upload long documents instead of pasting pieces. Get summaries where every point cites its section, find every change between two contract versions with three ledgers, and pull details into tables that mark what is not stated and where sources conflict.
Chapter 3: Numbers You Can Trust
Write counting rules into the prompt, make Harbor & Home's weekly totals reconcile, clean a list without changing a fact, and read a chart without inventing reasons.
Standing instructions in four parts, a facts file, a rules brief and a five-line voice file, then a canary test that proves a chat is reading the Project, with a library/ mirror you can rebuild from.
Chapter 5: Your Voice, Written Down
The Morrissey Principle for everyday work: a one-page voice spec built from your own samples, placed in a Project, your instructions or a style, and checked with a blind test. Hand over the drafting, never the voice.
Chapter 6: What It Remembers
Working memory, saved memory and Project files in plain words; reviewing, editing and deleting memory topics; incognito chats; and a written policy of what Claude may and may not keep, with a box on contracts, health and money documents.
Chapter 7: Research With Receipts
When to use web search, extended thinking or Research, ranking official sources inside the prompt, writing Not confirmed instead of guessing, auditing three citations at the source, and how Claude chooses what to cite.
Chapter 8: Artifacts You Hand Over
Documents and small tools built in conversation: a one-page estimate a client can approve, a checklist that keeps its ticks around one anchor date, revision by an old-and-new table, and export to Word, PDF or slides.
Chapter 9: Facts Into Answers
One facts file feeding an email, a post and a flyer with no new claims, a content calendar that fits the hours you have, and an FAQ where every answer traces to a fact plus a list of questions the facts cannot answer.
Chapter 10: Connectors and Their Keys
Connect one service with the permissions you choose: Allow once versus Always allow, drafting kept separate from sending, retrieved text treated as information and never as orders, and a connectors.md you review monthly.
Chapter 11: Your First Skill
A skill is a folder of instructions Claude loads when the job matches. Turn your best keeper into a SKILL.md, upload it, watch it load on a matching task and stay quiet on an unrelated one.
Chapter 12: Everything Else
List the admin that crowds out your real work, rank it by hours and by risk, weigh Jason's case for moving hours into systems, and run the top item as a workflow. The ranked list becomes a staffing plan.
Chapter 13: The Long Job
Hand Claude an outcome under a seven-field brief (input, output, owner, permissions, limits, recovery, acceptance), choose where it runs and how it asks permission, and answer four questions before it acts in public under your name.
Chapter 14: On a Schedule, Under Review
One bounded Monday task that reads a file, carries written Limits and stops on stale input, read by a person for its first three runs, plus a thirty-minute weekly review inside a Project that reviews the system instead of the output.
Chapter 15: Rent the Tool, Own the Work
Export memory, artifacts and skills into library/, rebuild a Project in ten minutes, learn what a Team plan changes, run the Volume 1 ownership test on Claude, and name the first job for a coding agent.
Table of contents for the first printing.
From Stake Your Claim
The model is a collaborator in the same way that a competent studio assistant is a collaborator. It executes within the artist’s creative framework. The framework remains the artist’s.
Free sample
Read Chapter 4: The Project Is the Product
Write your instructions once, give Claude your facts and a five-line voice file, then prove it reads them. About 28 min. The book continues with Chapter 5, Your Voice, Written Down.
Delivered by the author
Reserve Volume 2
Reserve Volume 2: Working With Claude now and your copy is first in line when it prints. Pick this volume or the whole series in the form.
- Jason Colapietro delivers every copy personally.
- Reservations are first in line when each volume prints.
- No payment today. You confirm when your copy is ready.
Questions
About Volume 2
Do I need to read Volume 1 before Volume 2?
No. Chapter 1 maps the Volume 1 four-part prompt (Job, Material, Shape, Check) onto Anthropic's outcome brief and runs the same prompt in ChatGPT and Claude, so a reader who already uses an AI chat every day starts here. Readers new to AI assistants get more from Volume 2 after Volume 1.
Should I use Claude or ChatGPT?
Use both. Volume 2 runs the same prompt in each in Chapter 1, and keeps your instructions, facts, voice file and skills in a library folder you own, so a task moves between tools without starting over.
What is in the free sample?
The free sample is Chapter 4, The Project Is the Product: standing instructions in four parts, a facts file, a rules brief and a five-line voice file, with a Try this exercise that builds a Project and a canary test that proves a chat is reading it.
How do I get a copy of Volume 2?
Reserve a copy on this page. Jason Colapietro delivers every copy personally. Reservations are first in line when Volume 2 prints.
