0.4 · Your first conversation with Claude
In 2 minutes
Talking to Claude means writing as you would to a person. You put your request in the message box, you send, you read the answer.
The difference with a search engine comes down to one word: you can follow up. Refine, correct, ask for shorter, simpler, in another tone. And Claude keeps track of what came before. It is a conversation, not a series of separate queries.
Let's do it together
Open your home screen, and really do this as you read.
- Click in the message box.
- Write a simple request. You can copy this one:
Explain to me in three simple sentences why the sky is blue.- Send, then read the answer. It arrives in a few seconds, and it writes itself in front of you.
- Follow up with a further question, without repeating the subject:
Can you say it again even more simply, as if for an 8-year-old?Notice what has just happened. You did not say “the blue sky” again, and yet Claude understood. It takes the whole ongoing exchange into account. That thread is what you will learn to use throughout this handbook.
And remember the phrase that holds for all four tools: the first answer is a draft. It is by asking again that the result becomes good.
Go back to the field you know well that you noted in chapter 0.2. Ask Claude a real question about it, then ask it to say the same thing differently.
Two things to watch: does it take your rewording request into account? And, since you know the subject, is what it says correct?
- Your second request does not repeat the subject, and Claude understood anyway.
- You can name one thing it got right about your field, and one thing that is wrong, imprecise or too general. If there is nothing wrong, so much the better, but look properly, that is the exercise.
- You have had at least two exchanges in the same conversation, without opening a new one.
- Writing a single word and expecting a miracle. “Marketing” means nothing. The clearer your request, the better the answer, and that is exactly what the next chapter is about.
- Giving up at the first imperfect answer. The first answer is a draft. You correct and you ask again: that is the normal way of working, not a failure.
- Opening a new conversation for every question. You lose the thread, and Claude remembers nothing. Stay in the same one as long as the subject is the same.
- You talk to Claude as you would to a person, in ordinary sentences.
- You can follow up and refine without rewriting everything.
- Claude keeps track of the conversation in progress.
The rest of the handbook covers Claude, Higgsfield, Claude Design and Claude Code, with 11 recipes and a 30-day programme.
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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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