Hey
For about two years, I did the same thing every single day.
Open Claude. Type a question. Read the answer. Close the tab.
That was it. Nothing more. And because the answers were good, I told myself I was using AI well. I was writing faster, researching faster, thinking faster.
But I was wrong. And I did not find out until I came across a single image.
Someone shared a breakdown of 100 Claude tips online. At first I thought it was just another "10 prompts to try" post. I scrolled past it.
Then I came back to it.
And I just sat there staring at it for a full ten minutes.
Because I did not recognize half the things on it. Projects. Skills. MCP Connectors. Batch API. Prompt Caching. Claude Code. The Files API.
Features I had never touched. Features I did not even know existed.
And I run a newsletter about AI.
That was the moment I realized: I was not using Claude. I was using a very small corner of Claude. The part that looks exactly like a search bar. Ask a question, get an answer. Ask another question, get another answer.
Meanwhile, the actual power of the tool was sitting right there, completely untouched.
So I spent the next few days going through everything. Testing it. Documenting it. And today I want to walk you through what I found so you do not spend two years the way I did.
My Problem: Claude Was A Very Expensive Search Engine
Here is what my old Claude workflow looked like.
New chat. Paste context. Ask question. Get answer. Copy answer. Close.
New chat. Paste context again. Ask question. Get answer. Copy answer. Close.
Every single session started from zero. Claude had no memory of who I was, what I was building, or what my newsletter voice sounded like. I was training it from scratch every time and I did not even notice because it kept giving me decent answers anyway.
The problem was not that Claude was failing. The problem was that I had created a ceiling for myself by treating a powerful system like a basic tool.
I was not prompting badly. I was building nothing. And building nothing means every session is disposable.
How I Found The Solution
The image that stopped me was a "100 Claude Tips" breakdown someone put together after going deep on the platform with their team.
The tips that blew my mind were not about writing better prompts.
They were about the infrastructure you build around your prompts. The context you store. The workflows you encode. The tools you connect. The way you stop starting from scratch and start building something that compounds.
And once I saw it that way, I could not unsee it.
Here is how you can start doing the same thing, step by step.
Step 1: Stop Starting From Zero — Use Projects
Every time you open a new chat, Claude knows nothing about you.
Projects fix that.
Inside Claude, you can create a Project and upload your brand voice, tone guidelines, reference documents, and anything else you want Claude to always know. Every conversation inside that project carries that context automatically.
No more pasting the same brief every time. No more explaining who you are, what you do, or how you write.
For me this changed everything. I created a project for CoolDeep AI and uploaded my newsletter voice guidelines, past examples, and audience notes. Now every draft I write inside that project already sounds like me from the first line.
Step 2: Turn Repeated Work Into a Skill
This is the tip that I wish someone had told me on day one.
If you do something more than twice, you should turn it into a Claude Skill.
A Skill is basically a saved workflow. A set of instructions Claude follows every time, exactly the way you want, without you having to explain it again. It is your standard operating procedure, encoded into an agent.
Think about how much time you spend re-explaining things to Claude. "Write it in my voice." "Keep it under 300 words." "Always give me three options." "Use short paragraphs."
A Skill holds all of that so you never have to say it again.
Go to Claude Cowork, click Customize, then Skills, then Add. Choose "Create with Claude," describe your workflow, and Claude builds the skill file for you. It even tests it and shows you where it passes and fails before finalizing.
Step 3: Connect Claude To Your Real Tools (MCP)
This is where things get genuinely powerful.
Without a connector, Claude only knows what you paste into the chat. With a connector, Claude can actually reach into your Google Drive, read your Gmail, access your GitHub, or pull from your Slack.
Real data. Real context. Real action.
To set this up, go to Customize in Claude Cowork, click Connectors, and add the tools you use most. The "Claude in Chrome" connector alone is worth it because it gives Claude the ability to browse the web in real time while working on your tasks.
Research tasks go from "use your training data" to "let me actually go look that up right now."
Step 4: Turn On Memory
This one takes 10 seconds and most people have never done it.
Go to Settings in Claude. Find the option that says "Generate memory from chat history" and turn it on.
Once that is active, Claude starts building a picture of who you are across every conversation. Your preferences. Your work style. Your projects. Your patterns.
The first week will feel the same. The second week, Claude starts feeling like a tool that actually knows you. By the second month, you will not remember what it was like before.
Step 5: Use Claude Code If You Build Anything
If you are a developer, or even someone who tinkers with automations and scripts, stop using the chat interface for code.
Claude Code is a terminal-based tool that can edit multiple files at once, run CI pipelines, handle complex debugging, and work across entire projects. The chat window was never designed for serious dev work.
Download Claude Code from the official Claude website and use it with Claude Sonnet 4.6 for everyday coding tasks. The difference is immediate.
Step 6: Cut Your API Costs Significantly
If you use the Claude API (and if you build anything with AI, you should be), there are two features that can cut your costs dramatically.
The first is Prompt Caching. If you send the same system prompt or reference documents in repeated API calls, Prompt Caching stores that content so you do not pay full price to re-send it every time. Savings go up to 90 percent on repeated inputs.
The second is the Batch API. For work that does not need to happen instantly, submit it as a batch job and get 50 percent discounted processing with a 12 to 24 hour turnaround. Perfect for bulk content tasks, classification runs, or anything you can queue and come back to.
The Listicle: What Changes When You Do All Of This
Here is the honest summary of what shifts when you stop using Claude like a search bar:
1. You stop losing context every single session because Projects hold it for you
2. You stop re-explaining your workflow because Skills encode it once and run it forever
3. You stop working with imaginary data because MCP connectors give Claude access to your real tools
4. You stop being a stranger to Claude because Memory builds your profile automatically
5. You stop wasting money on the API because Prompt Caching and Batch API cut costs before you even think about them
6. You stop treating every prompt as a one-off because you start building systems that compound
7. You stop wondering why your results feel inconsistent because you have built infrastructure instead of just asking questions
Finally…
The 100 Claude tips image that stopped me had one clear message underneath all of it.
Claude is not a chatbot. It is a platform. And most of us are using a fraction of it.
The gap between someone who uses Claude the basic way and someone who has built around it, Projects, Skills, MCP, Memory, API infrastructure, is not a small gap. It is months of compound productivity. It is the difference between a tool you use and a system that works.
You do not need to implement all of this today. Start with one thing.
Turn on Memory right now. That is it. That one switch, ten seconds, will start changing your experience within two weeks without you having to do anything else.
Then come back and add a Project next week. Then build your first Skill the week after.
One layer at a time, you stop using Claude like a search bar and start using it like the platform it actually is.
Stay curious, talk to you tomorrow.
Go [check out the full LinkedIn post](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7461747364920332288/) for the rest of the 100 tips. The sample alone is worth your afternoon, and the contributor clearly put the work in to map this properly. Which tip here is actually new to you?