PART 0 · YOUR FIRST STEPS

0.1 · Welcome, and how to use this handbook

What you will be able to do

Understand what this handbook is for, how it is built, and how to get yourself unstuck when something does not go as planned.

Someone sitting with an open book on one side and a laptop on the other. — This handbook is read with the tool open beside you. Read on its own, it is worth almost nothing.

In 2 minutes

This handbook asks for no technical knowledge. None. If you can send a message and open a website, you already know everything you need to start.

It teaches you to use four tools that will save you time in your work, your studies or your projects. We move in small steps, and in every chapter you do something concrete: no theory you forget straight away.

The image to keep in mind: you are learning to drive, not to build the engine. You do not need to understand how an AI works to use it very well, exactly as you drive without knowing how to assemble a gearbox.

Let's do it together

No tool to open for this chapter. We are setting up how you read, and it will save you time on all the others.

Spot the shape of a chapter. Always the same headings, in the same order: what you will be able to do, in 2 minutes, let's do it together, your turn, you have got it if, traps to avoid, what to remember. After two chapters you will know instinctively where to look.
Rule number one: you do it as you read. The tool on one side of the screen, the handbook on the other. Reading without doing is like watching someone swim.
Do not skip the “Your turn” heading. It is the only moment when you are alone at the controls, with no model to copy. And straight after, “You have got it if…” tells you what a good result looks like: that is how you check without needing anyone.
The working files are delivered separately. With this handbook you received four things besides the pages: the logbook for the 30 days, the troubleshooting, requests and glossary page, the demonstration folder for Part IV, and the deliverables of the eleven recipes from Part V. These are .html files and compressed folders: put them somewhere you will find again, an “AI Workshop” folder on your desktop does the job nicely. The handbook refers to them by name.
Go in order. Claude is the command centre: it is the one you learn first, and it is the one that steers Higgsfield. Claude Design and Claude Code are two separate workshops, which you open from your Claude account. They do not depend on each other, but they all call for the same skill: putting your request well.

Putting the handbook and the tool side by side

Windows: click in the window, then press the Windows key + left arrow. Do the same with the other window and the right arrow.
Mac: hold a window's green button down for a second, then choose the side.
Small screen (13 inches or less): do not split. Two half-unreadable windows is worse. Switch with Alt + Tab (Windows) or Cmd + Tab (Mac).

The conventions of this handbook

Four things to know, and you will never trip over them again.

The grey boxes hold ready-to-copy requests. You can paste them into Claude just as they are.
Whatever is in square brackets, you replace: brackets included. If you read “Turn this video [link] into ten clips”, you paste your own link in place of “[link]”, and the brackets disappear. That is the number one trap of ready-made requests.
The colours tell you which tool is involved: Claude, Higgsfield, Claude Design, Claude Code. Every part also carries its number in Roman numerals, so you do not depend on the colours to find your way.
Screenshots age faster than text. If a button is not where the handbook shows it, trust your screen, not the handbook. What you are looking for, on the other hand, does not change.

Note

This file reads offline: everything is embedded, images included. The tools themselves need the internet: they are what you will be working with.

The sentence that gets you unstuck

Learn this one right now. It holds for any moment in the handbook, with any of the four tools. When you cannot find a button, when a step does not go as written, when you do not understand a word: ask Claude itself.

I'm a beginner and I'm stuck. Here is what I'm trying to do: [describe your step].
Here is what I can see on screen: [describe].
Tell me exactly where to click, step by step, with no jargon.

Claude knows its own interfaces better than any printed manual, and it knows them as they are today. It is your living instruction book. Never stay stuck for more than five minutes without asking it.

The pace

Fifteen to thirty minutes a day is worth more than a whole evening. And if you skip three days, you are not “starting over”: you pick up at the chapter where you stopped, after rereading its “What to remember” box. Dropping off for a few days is normal, it cancels nothing.

Your turn

Write one sentence, somewhere you will find it again: what would you like to achieve thanks to AI? One sentence, not a paragraph. A project, a chore to get rid of, a wish.

We will come back to it in the very last chapter of the handbook, and you will be surprised how far you have come.

You have got it if…

Your sentence is written somewhere you can find, not just in your head.
It names one precise thing, not “get into AI”.
You know where to copy the unsticking request above from, when you need it.

Traps to avoid

Wanting to read it all at once without doing anything. This handbook is practised, not read. One chapter a day doing the exercises is worth more than the whole book in one evening.
Skipping Part 0 because you think you are past it. It lays down the reflexes that serve everywhere afterwards, including for the most impressive tools.
Staying stuck in silence. Five minutes without progress: you ask Claude. That is what it is there for.

What to remember

No technical prerequisites. You learn to drive, not to build the engine.
You do it as you read, with the tool open next to the handbook.
Whatever is in [square brackets] gets replaced, brackets included.
Stuck? Describe your situation to Claude and ask it where to click.

← What you need before you start AI in 2 minutes, no jargon →

The rest of the handbook covers Claude, Higgsfield, Claude Design and Claude Code, with 11 recipes and a 30-day programme.

See the full handbook Open in the reader

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Written by Sylvère Bamenou, Cotonou

This handbook is not an expert's course: it is the roadmap of my own learning of these tools, written for the least technical among us.

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