Claude Made Simple

Welcome to Claude Made Simple — the JulieMango guide to turning Claude into the engine room of your small business. No jargon, no rabbit holes, no technical skills needed. Whether this is your first time opening Claude or you've been poking at it without ever unlocking the good stuff, this playbook walks you through every feature with checklists and frameworks you can put to work today.

We're the team behind the JulieMango marketplace — 200+ ready-made AI agents and a 2,264-skill library for small businesses, creators and solopreneurs. We set Claude up for people every single day; this is everything we've learned, in one place.

We've arranged this the way we onboard our own customers — five stages, each building on the last:

1. Getting Started

Choose Your Claude Plan

Your Setup Checklist

• Go to claude.ai and create an account
• Pick your starting plan (free is fine to begin)
• Familiarise yourself with the interface (below)

Know Your Interface

The Prompt Bar — centre of the screen. This is where you talk to Claude.

Model Selector — choose your engine: Sonnet → everyday tasks (fast, reliable) · Opus → ambitious, complex work (deeper reasoning).

The + Button — extra features like web search, file uploads, and more.

Left Sidebar — your navigation hub: create new chats, browse past conversations, access Projects, Artifacts, and more.

Chat Management — click into any past chat to ⭐ star it (pins it to the top), ✏️ rename it, or 📁 add it to a project.

2. The RIPE Method

❌ The Unripe Prompt

"How do I go viral on social media?"

What you get back: generic advice about being consistent, using hashtags and posting reels. Stuff you could find in any blog post. You'd spend twenty minutes trying to make it useful.

✅ The RIPE Prompt

A RIPE prompt in the wild:

Result: I want to attract small business owners who are already making
money but feel overwhelmed running everything by themselves. I'm not trying
to get famous — I want the right people finding me and reaching out about
working together.

Information: I run a coaching business doing about £12K/month. I post on
Instagram and LinkedIn but I get generic engagement — likes from people who
will never buy. I've tried posting tips and motivational content. It hasn't
translated to clients. I have about 45 minutes a day to spend on this.

Process: Identify the specific type of content that attracts buyers
rather than followers for a service-based business. Explain why that content
works differently than content designed for reach.

Exact format: Give me 3 content angles with a one-sentence explanation of
why each one attracts buyers specifically. No generic advice about
consistency or hashtags.

Your RIPE Checklist

• Write your first RIPE prompt (use a real problem you're facing right now)
• Compare the output to a "lazy" version of the same question
• Practise iteration — ask follow-ups like "Give me 6 more variations of #2"
• Keep talking to the model until you get what you actually want (never settle for the first response)

We teach personalisation before research tools — a Claude that knows who you are makes every other feature sharper.

3. Custom Instructions & Your AI Operating System

What Are Custom Instructions?

A set of preferences and context Claude reads every time you start a new conversation. No more re-explaining yourself. No more generic responses.

How to Set Them

• Click your profile picture (bottom left corner)
• Go to Settings
• Find the Personal Preferences box under General
• Paste in your custom instructions
• Hit Save Changes

🧠 Build Your AI Operating System

This framework puts you in the top 1% of AI users — most people never do it. Fill out five sections that teach Claude exactly who you are and how to work with you.

Your AI Operating System Checklist

• Fill out all 5 sections (15–20 minutes — worth every one)
• Paste it into Claude's Custom Instructions
• Hit Save Changes
• Test it — start a new chat and ask Claude something about your business
• Refine it over the next week as you notice gaps

4. Research & Vision

🌐 Web Search

Web search turns Claude from a text generator into a real-time research and analysis tool. It pulls live, current information from the internet — accurate, up-to-date answers instead of stale training data.

How to Enable It

• Click the + button in the prompt bar
• Click Web Search (it turns blue when active)
• Keep it on by default for the most accurate responses

What to Use Web Search For

• Researching competitors (their offers, pricing, strategy)
• Pulling documentation for tools your team uses
• Current events and market trends
• Fact-checking and finding up-to-date data
• Creating blog posts or content with live sources
• Researching specific people, companies, or tools

A web-search prompt worth stealing:

I run a high-ticket AI business coaching offer targeting small business
owners doing £10-75K/month. Use web search to research [Competitor Name]'s
coaching offer, content strategy, and sales funnel. Identify their main
offer and price point, their content strategy, their sales language and
positioning, and any gaps or underserved angles I could fill.

What you get: a complete competitive analysis pulled from live web data — pricing, strategy, positioning, and the gaps you can exploit. In seconds.

👁️ Vision

Claude can see and analyse images — screenshots, photos, documents, designs, anything visual. Upload an image and Claude will understand it and give you feedback.

Vision Use Cases

• Screenshot your website → get conversion optimisation feedback
• Upload a thumbnail → get click-through-rate improvement suggestions
• Photo of a whiteboard → have Claude organise and digitise your notes
• Upload a design mockup → get UX/UI feedback
• Photo of a document → have Claude extract and summarise the content

How to Use Vision

• Click the + button in the prompt bar
• Select Add files or photos
• Upload your image
• Write a prompt that tells Claude what you want analysed

5. Artifacts

What Are Artifacts?

Interactive, shareable mini-apps that Claude builds for you from a simple description. You describe what you need, Claude builds it, and you can publish it with a shareable link.

What You Can Build

• ROI calculators for your clients
• Interactive dashboards
• Lead capture forms
• Flashcard study tools
• Data visualisations
• Prototype apps and websites
• Pricing calculators
• Interactive quizzes
• Project planning tools

How to Create One

• Open a new chat (use Opus for best results with artifacts)
• Describe what you want in detail (inputs, outputs, design)
• Claude opens a new panel and builds it live
• Test it and request changes if needed
• Publish it → click the share button in the upper right corner → copy the public link

An artifact prompt worth stealing — the ROI calculator:

Build me an interactive ROI calculator for business owners who are
considering AI automation in their business.

Inputs: their hourly rate, hours per week spent on manual/repetitive
tasks, number of weeks they work per year.

Outputs: annual cost of those manual tasks, estimated time saved,
estimated annual savings, and a simple ROI metric if they invested
£4K in an automation setup.

Make it clean, professional, and make the value obvious at a glance.

A tool like this takes Claude seconds to produce — and it's exactly the kind of thing that used to need a developer and a week.

Your Artifacts Checklist

• Build your first artifact (start with something useful for your business)
• Test it with real inputs
• Publish it and grab the shareable link
• Share it with a client, your audience, or your team

6. Projects

What Are Projects?

Dedicated workspaces inside Claude with permanent context. Create a project, upload documents, set project-specific instructions — and every conversation inside it starts with Claude already knowing everything it needs to know.

Why Projects Are Powerful

• Your personal custom instructions (AI Operating System) are always running in the background
• Each project adds its own layer of context on top
• Claude gets both your personal preferences and the specific project knowledge
• No more re-explaining context at the start of every conversation

How to Create a Project

• Open the sidebar (top left)
• Click Projects
• Hit New Project

• Name it (e.g. "Client Onboarding," "Newsletter," "Marketing Strategy")
• Add a description of what the project is for

Setting Up Your Project

Upload Files (Your Knowledge Base)

• Click Add Files inside the project
• Upload relevant documents: SOPs, brand guidelines, client files, templates, past work, analytics
• Sources: upload from device, Google Drive, or GitHub
• You can use up to 100% of the project capacity — load it up

Set Project Instructions

• Click into the Instructions section of your project
• Write specific instructions that reference your uploaded files
• Tell Claude how to behave inside this project specifically

Example project instructions:

"When creating any script, outline, or content brief, always reference
the uploaded brand guidelines and intro formula before writing. Match the
voice, positioning, and content rules exactly as described in the
documents. Never produce content that contradicts the brand voice guide."

Project Ideas to Get You Started

• Content Creation — brand guidelines + content formulas + analytics
• Client Work — proposals + SOPs + client info
• Business Strategy — financial data + goals + competitor research
• Team Management — org chart + meeting notes + project timelines
• Personal Development — learning goals + course notes + reading lists

7. Skills

What Are Skills?

Reusable instruction sets that teach Claude how to perform a specific task the exact same way every time. Think of them as SOPs for your AI — train it once, and it just handles it from there.

Skills vs. Projects — What's the Difference?

They work together: projects have the knowledge, skills have the process.

How to Create a Skill

• Open the sidebar
• Click Customise (under the search tab)
• Go to the Skills tab
• Hit the + button
• Select Create with Claude (let Claude build the skill for you)

The Skill Creation Process

• Tell Claude what the skill should do
• Answer its questions about inputs, outputs, and format
• Review the test output — does it match what you want?
• Set an activation command (e.g. "proposal," "brief," "invoice")
• Click Copy to Your Skills to install it

Your Skills Checklist

• Identify 3 tasks you do repeatedly in your business
• Create your first skill using "Create with Claude" (or download one from The Shelf)
• Test it with real data
• Set an activation command so you can invoke it instantly
• Install it to your account
• Build (or download) 2 more skills this week

8. Connectors

What Are Connectors?

Connectors let Claude talk directly to your other tools — Google Calendar, Gmail, Google Drive, Slack, and a growing list of others. From inside one Claude conversation you can:

• Check your calendar
• Find files in your Drive
• Draft email responses
• Pull Slack messages
• And more — new connectors are added regularly

How to Connect a Tool

• Open the sidebar
• Click Customise
• Go to the Connectors tab
• Find the tool you want to connect
• Click Connect and authorise access
• Set your approval preferences (below)

Setting Approval Preferences

Priority Connectors to Set Up

• Google Calendar — check schedule, plan your week, find availability
• Gmail — draft responses, find emails, summarise threads
• Google Drive — find documents, pull information from files
• Slack — check messages, summarise channels, draft responses

Your Connectors Checklist

• Connect at least 2 tools to start
• Set appropriate approval levels for each action
• Test it — ask Claude "What events do I have this week?"
• Try combining connectors — "Check my calendar for tomorrow and draft a prep email for my 10am meeting"

9. The Full Stack: How It All Works Together

The Claude Stack (Bottom to Top)

Your 30-Day Rollout

The playbook gets you set up. The marketplace keeps you moving:

Questions? Email amaya@juliemango.ai — a human (assisted by a very good team of agents) will get back to you.