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Claude for Operators

Your First 30 Minutes

Last verified: 13 February 2026 | Applies to: Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise

In 30 seconds

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This guide walks you through your first 30 minutes with Claude — from signing in to having a genuinely useful setup. You’ll enable skills, connect a tool, install your first plugin, and seed Claude with your business context. By the end, Claude will understand your role, your team, and your shorthand.

Before you start

Section titled “Before you start”

You’ll need:

  • A Claude account on a paid plan (Pro or above for the full walkthrough)
  • Claude Desktop installed (download here)
  • One tool you want to connect (e.g., Slack, Asana, Notion, Google Drive)

Free plan users: You can follow along for the first two steps (skills and connectors). Cowork and plugins require a paid plan.

  1. Minutes 0-5: Enable skills

    Section titled “Minutes 0-5: Enable skills”
    1. Open Claude Desktop
    2. Go to Settings → Capabilities
    3. Ensure “Code execution and file creation” is enabled
    4. In the Skills section, toggle on the skills relevant to your role:
      • If you create documents: enable the document creation skills (Excel, Word, PowerPoint, PDF)
      • If you analyse data: enable the data-related skills
    5. Start a chat and try: “Create a summary table of Q1 sales by region” — Claude should produce an artifact you can download

    What just happened: You gave Claude domain knowledge. Skills are markdown instructions that make Claude behave like a specialist rather than a generalist.

  2. Minutes 5-10: Connect a tool

    Section titled “Minutes 5-10: Connect a tool”
    1. Go to Settings → Connectors (or visit claude.com/connectors)
    2. Find a tool you use daily — Slack, Asana, Notion, or Google Drive are good first choices
    3. Click the integration → Authenticate with OAuth
    4. Return to chat and try: “Show me my open tasks in Asana” (or whichever tool you connected)

    What just happened: Claude can now read from and write to your tool. It’s no longer limited to what you paste into the conversation.

  3. Minutes 10-20: Install the Productivity plugin

    Section titled “Minutes 10-20: Install the Productivity plugin”

    This is the step that changes how Claude works for you.

    1. Open the Cowork tab in Claude Desktop
    2. Select a folder for Claude to work in (create a new folder like “Claude Workspace” if needed)
    3. Go to Plugins in the Cowork sidebar → search “Productivity” → Install (Or visit claude.com/plugins to install from the web)
    4. Start a new Cowork session and type /start

    Claude creates four things:

    • TASKS.md — a task list Claude can read and update
    • CLAUDE.md — working memory for your current context
    • memory/ — a directory for longer-term knowledge
    • dashboard.html — a visual overview that opens in your browser
    1. Claude will ask about your role, team, and current priorities. Be specific:

    “I’m COO at a 15-person ecommerce company. My direct reports are Sarah (ops), Marcus (finance), and Priya (marketing). We’re mid-way through migrating from Shopify to a headless setup. Key acronyms: PSR = product status report, WBR = weekly business review, Q1 close = our fiscal year ends in March.”

    This gets stored. Next session, Claude already knows.

  4. Minutes 20-25: Test the memory

    Section titled “Minutes 20-25: Test the memory”

    Once your context is seeded, test that it works:

    “Draft a message to Marcus asking him to prep the PSR for tomorrow’s WBR”

    Claude should know that Marcus is your finance lead, what a PSR is, and what WBR means — without you explaining.

    Try a few more:

    • “What are my current priorities?”
    • “Create a task: review Q1 close timeline with Marcus by Friday”
    • “Open my dashboard”

  5. Minutes 25-30: Set up folder instructions

    Section titled “Minutes 25-30: Set up folder instructions”

    Create a file called CLAUDE.md in any folder where you work with Cowork. This file acts as persistent instructions that Claude reads automatically.

    Example CLAUDE.md for a project folder:

    # Project: Website Redesign
    

    ## Team
    - Lead: Sarah (ops)
    - Design: external agency (Pixel & Co)
    - Dev: outsourced to TechPartners
    

    ## Rules
    - All client-facing copy must use Australian English
    - Budget approval required for anything over $5,000
    - Weekly status updates go to the #website-redesign Slack channel
    

    ## Current status
    Phase 2 (design review). Launch target: 15 March.

    Now whenever Claude works in that folder, it follows these instructions automatically.

What you’ve set up

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In 30 minutes, you now have:

  • Skills enabled for document and data tasks
  • A connected tool that Claude can read from and write to
  • The Productivity plugin with persistent memory of your team and context
  • Folder instructions that customise Claude’s behaviour per project

What to do next

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