How to Automate Your Life & Work w/ Claude Code: Ultimate Beginner’s Guide
By Liam Ottley
Summary
## Key takeaways - **Claude Code as Digital Employee**: Claude code is an agent that acts as a digital employee for you, needing tools, access, context, or knowledge about what it's doing. In order to do that correctly, it needs a workspace which is one folder on your computer that contains other folders and context and files and scripts required to do a task or set of tasks. [01:03], [01:28] - **Workspaces by Key Function**: Split workspaces by a key function or area of work, like one for personal brand content, one for agency proposals, one for education product with course material context, and one for SaaS engineering. This keeps them clearer and allows better tuning of content and context. [03:05], [03:44] - **Avoid Chatbot-Style Use**: Using Claude code like a chatbot leads to long conversations that fill up context with messages taking up 26% or more, causing context bloat where instructions get diluted and outputs are inconsistent. Instead, create standardized command files as reusable prompts to ensure consistency and save time. [08:44], [09:03] - **Context Stacking Layers**: Start with claude.md for workspace purpose and orientation, then layer business info, personal roles, latest strategy, and current data like website views or YouTube data. This allows intelligent conversation on top without context bloat. [13:21], [14:06] - **Reusable Commands Automate Workflows**: Commands are reusable prompts in natural language that guide Claude code through workflows using workspace content, scripts, and tools, like /marketing report for weekly reports or /analyze competitor for deep research, scraping, reports, and PowerPoint. [04:48], [15:17] - **Create Plan and Implement Loop**: Use /create plan to have Claude analyze the workspace and make a detailed implementation plan for new functions, then /implement to execute it, ensuring full alignment like updating claude.md and adding scripts without manual chatting. [11:15], [25:02]
Topics Covered
- Claude Code Equals Digital Employee
- Workspaces Split by Business Function
- Chatbot Use Causes Context Bloat
- Context Stacking Enables Intelligence
- Plan-Implement Automates Workflows
Full Transcript
You probably suck at using Claude code or maybe you're not using it at all, which is even worse. But in this video, I'm going to break down exactly how I use it as an AI founder. I run multiple different AI companies at this point, how I use it myself to automate certain
parts of my roles. But that can also be taken to whether you're a student or an employee looking to just automate your whole degree or automating parts of your work so that you do a whole lot less. Or
you're a business owner as well wanting to be able to use it for yourself or teach it to your teams. This is the exact training that I put all of my staff through so that they can use it and set these up to automate parts of their role as well. This is probably the best general purpose AI tool for
productivity right now. When set up correctly and when used correctly, it can automate up to 90% of the stuff that you do. So, I'm going to be breaking
you do. So, I'm going to be breaking down in this video the exact template that I use and give to my staff, them to start and create their own workspace.
I'll be breaking down the four biggest mistakes that I see beginners make that stop them from getting the most out of it. And then I'm going to be showing you
it. And then I'm going to be showing you step by step how you can get this set up on your machine as a beginner the right way using all the sort of shortcuts and commands to make this really fast to use. and then show you a real and live
use. and then show you a real and live example of me using the template to automate certain parts of my own workflows so you see how it works in action. I haven't seen anyone else on
action. I haven't seen anyone else on YouTube dropping this kind of source on claw code. So let's get into it. So
claw code. So let's get into it. So
we've got all this to get through but we're just going to start with the first thing that you have to understand is that an agent which is what claude code is acts as a digital employee for you.
So what does that mean? A digital
employee will need to have some kind of uh tools or access or context or knowledge about what it's doing, right?
And the first thing you need to understand with getting this set up and how to get the most out of it is like claude code is going to be your digital employee or your assistant to do whatever you set it up to do. But in
order to do that correctly, it needs to have what I call a workspace. So what is a workspace? It is one folder on your
a workspace? It is one folder on your computer that contains other folders and context and files and scripts required to do a task or set of tasks that you want to be performed through call code.
So in this case, as you can see on screen here, this is what we'll be working with later. And this is VS Code.
Don't worry, this is like it's not coding. It's nothing. It's just chatting
coding. It's nothing. It's just chatting away to a chatbot in here. And if you can't wrap your head around using one of these IDs at this point, you're kind of cooked. So, this is for those of you who
cooked. So, this is for those of you who are extra intelligent and uh believe you can wrap your head around a basic tool like this. So, this is what a workspace
like this. So, this is what a workspace looks like. And this is essentially one
looks like. And this is essentially one folder. You can see it's called clawed
folder. You can see it's called clawed workspace here. This is a clawed
workspace here. This is a clawed workspace template that you guys are going to get. But inside this folder, this is just any old folder on your machine. Inside it, there are a bunch of
machine. Inside it, there are a bunch of other folders. So, we have the commands
other folders. So, we have the commands folder, which we'll go into in a second.
We have the skills, we have the context, we have outputs, plans, reference scripts, and the claude.mmd. So when you are thinking about setting up claude code to be your personal assistant to automate parts of your work, you need to
create a workspace for it to operate within. And that means, okay, what
within. And that means, okay, what context does it need to understand who I am, the stuff that I do, the priorities and strategies we're working on right now, things like these command files, which take a workflow, like looking up or researching a podcast guest, how you
break that down into simple text, which we'll go through in a bit. But
basically, a workspace is a folder with a bunch of folders and files in it that you can configure in a certain way. And
this is by far the best setup and kind of template that I've found for training my teams on this. Um, it's just a great default starting point. Has all the key points you need to really get the most out of it. And you can use clawed code using these like create plan things,
which I'll show you in a bit, to very rapidly turn it into something that you can use for yourself and modify it. So,
for a workspace, I find it's most helpful to split them by a a kind of key function. Um, at least for me as a
function. Um, at least for me as a founder, I've got multiple different businesses. So, for me, I have multiple
businesses. So, for me, I have multiple workspaces, one for each function or area of my my work that I do. So, um, I think of it as like a digital teammate or employee for each of these areas for my personal brand and for the content I
do. I have a workspace for that. I have
do. I have a workspace for that. I have
a workspace for my agency helping us with proposals and scoping. I have one for my uh, education product. So, it has full context of all of the course material that I've created so that I can create new stuff easily. and one for my SAS as well, which is an engineering
kind of prompt engineering workbench, which I'll actually show you guys a little bit later. But in my case, I've split it into different areas. I could
try and ram it all into one, but I like to keep them a little bit clearer and more separate so that I can really tune the uh tune the content and context a little bit better. But uh if you're just an employee or a a student and you're
looking to automate parts of your work, you'll probably only need one and it's going to basically take all the job functions that you do. Say you're a marketing person and you need to like do
the weekly marketing report. You need to uh come up with a new campaign idea or like do some brainstorming or yeah analyze the last campaign and figure out what you can do next. All of these are
are tasks that you do that can be turned into a a command or a list of instructions and put into a command file here and then you're able to call those very quickly and say like /marketing report and it's going to do all those
things. So, it's kind of like any other
things. So, it's kind of like any other kind of automation, but in this case, you're doing it through just text files from claw code. Having enough context about you, it can kind of just read these text files, have access to all of these bits of uh context and documents
and folders and be able to do things for you like maybe pull information in from the web, which we're going to talk about a bit that falls into the scripts here.
So, as a bit of a walk through of uh this, we'll just break it down a little bit further here. We have firstly the commands folder. And you can think of
commands folder. And you can think of commands as reusable prompts to automate work functions or do things within the workspace. And like I said, these use
workspace. And like I said, these use natural language, just regular plain English or whatever language you speak to guide Claude code through a workflow or set of steps using the content and scripts and tools within the workspace.
So these are the main way we're going to be working as you'll see in a bit. And
these are the ways of baking in your workflow into a set of instructions that Claude can do uh on your behalf. Then we
have the skills folder here. And so
these are kind of like commands. They're
kind of merging a little bit at the moment. Uh but skills I like to think of
moment. Uh but skills I like to think of as a as a bit more substantial in a lot of cases. and they're kind of like
of cases. and they're kind of like installable plugins for your workspace.
They're typically created by others and you can go on to like skills marketplaces and try to find ones made by other people. There's a few security risks inherent in that which we'll touch on a little bit later. But skills are like kind of plugins or packages that
you can plug in um from other people a lot of the time and it's going to enhance or give more capabilities to your workspace. They're a little bit
your workspace. They're a little bit more advanced than I would like to go into within this uh within this tutorial, but I will be covering these two skills here cuz I think it's good to have in part of the template. And then
we have the context folder. And this is essential context on who you are, what you do, how you're doing it, and why.
And Claude Code reads this every session to come up to speed on who you are and what you do. So every time we spin up Claude Code, it's going to be reading all that information. So it fully understands the the big picture. This is
something we'll be touching on in a bit, but it's really important that every time you spin up Claude Code, it knows exactly who you are and what you're working on, current state of the strategies, current data that that's come back from different platforms.
Context is essential to give it sort of a base for you to have an intelligent conversation on. And in this template,
conversation on. And in this template, I've broken it down into the key different contexts that I found to be most effective. And they all build on
most effective. And they all build on top of each other, which we'll go into in a second. Then we have scripts down here. And scripts are like, I know it
here. And scripts are like, I know it might sound scary, but they're code snippets uh that are created by Claude Code. You don't have to write the code
Code. You don't have to write the code yourself. Claude Code can intelligently
yourself. Claude Code can intelligently figure out when it needs to create some kind of code or write a script. And a
script is just a bit of code that can sort of be triggered at a certain point.
It might take in some inputs, do a certain couple things on the internet, uh process some data in a certain way, and then pass it back to Claude code. So
it might be I write a script to fetch some information from my uh CRM or from some sort of API like you want to get the real-time weather data. It can pull it from a weather API. So scripts are a
handy way a bit more advanced tool but something we're going to be jumping into as well. But these are a key thing for
as well. But these are a key thing for pulling external data into your claude code instance. And then we have the
code instance. And then we have the claw.md which is an essential document
claw.md which is an essential document that describes the entire workspace to claude code every session that spins up.
So combined with the context folder, it basically means that every time we start cla code, it fully understands the workspace it's operating in, reads all of these different context documents and knows who you are, what you're doing within the business, what your
strategies are right now, any current data, and it's like fully understands where it is, what it's doing, and is ready to start taking action like an employee. So just like when a new person
employee. So just like when a new person comes into the company or you're hiring someone, you would need to give them all that context. And as you'll see when
that context. And as you'll see when we're actually working with claw code in here, we're starting it up. We're
starting a new version of claw code all the time. So that we need to give it
the time. So that we need to give it that onboarding every time it starts up.
All right, so that brings us down to the next and probably most important thing you need to know about Claude Code, which is priming and context management.
As you may or may not know, the latest Claude models only have 200,000 tokens available for us to play with. So we
want to essentially have Claude code fully contextualized, understand who we are, what we do, uh what we're what it's able to do within the workspace with as minimal tokens used as possible. So as
you can see here, this is actually from Claude Code itself. You can run this command /context and it will tell you how much context you've got available, how much you've used up already. And
basically, we want to be sending and and like interacting with claude code with as many of those tokens available because there's an effect called context bloat, which means the more tokens are used up out of that 200,000, like the more diluted your instructions are going
to be. So, you want to have it fully
to be. So, you want to have it fully dialed in, fully aware of who you are, what it's working within, and then you're just going to kind of drop your task on top of that. So, it's got all of this room, it's very clear on what it's working on, and you don't get any of the negative effects of context blow. So,
this all ties into something that we're going to be covering here in a second.
But first, let's go over the the biggest mistakes that people face when it comes to priming and context management and just generally using clawed code. And
the first is using claude code like a chatbot means you're just sitting there kind of chatting away like you would with chat GPT. And this is not really the best way to use it because you end up in these big long uh conversations.
And here you can see the messages take up a significant amount. In this case, when I took the screenshot, my messages were taking up 26% of the context. So
the if you're chatting away and you've filled up that uh that chat history with messages and like 150,000 tokens are filled up with all of the messages you've had back and forth with all code then you're going to have this context blo your instructions and messages are
going to be so diluted that the chance of it actually getting exactly what you want in the first go is going to be massively reduced. So so the first
massively reduced. So so the first mistake is using it like a chatbot. We
are not going to be doing that as you'll see in a bit. And the result is that you're going to get inconsistent and lowquality outputs due to lack of structured prompts and processes. So, we
want to be baking our workflows or the tasks that you do into reusable prompts.
You don't want to be like, "Uh, hey, I want to do this today. Can you do this for me?" Because one, you're wasting a
for me?" Because one, you're wasting a whole lot of time writing that out. And
two, it's going to be different each time, right? You want to make
time, right? You want to make standardized uh command files, which I'll show you in a second. Just a simple markdown file walking through the steps that you want claw code to take so that you have a structured and reusable prompt. It's going to save you tons of
prompt. It's going to save you tons of times and ensure that it's consistent.
And so, yeah, the solution here is to create reusable commands. And mistake
number two is not contextualizing clawed code at the start of every new session.
Like I was talking about before, if you have an employee, you need to give it context on who you are, what it's trying to do, what business environment it's operating in, what the goals are, what the values are of the business, all of this context that you have to give to someone in order for them to actually
function. You don't give a new employee
function. You don't give a new employee that context. How could you expect them
that context. How could you expect them to do well? It's the exact same thing with using an agent like this. So, the
result of not giving context is going to be poor quality output. You know, when you're like talking with Claude to ChatBT and it's just like not quite got your tone of voice right or it's just missing a bit of the picture. It's like,
"No, well, I'm not doing that right now with the strategy." So, because we've had change or like this is a new quarter and you always have to go like what's called in the loop and you're chatting back and forth just giving it nudges to get the final outcome you want. When you
fully contextualized it and you've used one of these reusable commands, it can freaking nail it like get it right on a button the first time. And that's when you think about how much time you're wasting and chatting back and forth. The
70% completed one might take you half an hour to finish whereas the 95% one might take you 2 minutes. So, if you're going to do this stuff, you need to do it right because there's a massive difference in the amount of time spent.
And so, the solution to mistake two is to always be running a /prime command, which we're going to go into in a bit.
But basically, whenever you start a new cla code session, we're going to run / prime. It's going to look at the context
prime. It's going to look at the context and the template like we have up here.
It's going to basically read the claw.md. It's going to read the context
claw.md. It's going to read the context here, and then basically, we have an intelligent base to have a conversation on, which we'll be getting into in a second. Mistake number three that I see
second. Mistake number three that I see noobs making is not utilizing, planning, and implementing loops. Now, this means using a clawed command to say, "Hey, I want to do this within the workspace.
Can you write a plan for how we could create this?" Like, "Hey, if I have a a
create this?" Like, "Hey, if I have a a new function, say I'm a marketing person and I'm using this and I've want to add a new command or a new task that I want Claude to be able to do for me." Some
people will try to do this all manually or just chat in the in the chat with Claw Code to try to get it to do it. But
that often means that it's not going to fully consider everything in the workspace. And when it sets it up, it's
workspace. And when it sets it up, it's not going to be fully aligned with everything else. So, you start to get
everything else. So, you start to get this janky workflow. When you have it set up the way that I'm going to show you in a second, it can fully analyze how everything else is set up. And when
you say, "Hey, I want to add this in."
It will go, "Okay, we can fit this in here." It'll relate to this and this and
here." It'll relate to this and this and this, and I need to update and change this, this, this, this to be aware of what we have in here. So, you always have this really fresh and aligned workspace that saves you tons of time ultimately. And so, that's where they
ultimately. And so, that's where they slash create plan and/implement commands, which come as part of the template. Mistake number four is not
template. Mistake number four is not utilizing scripts. Like I said before,
utilizing scripts. Like I said before, scripts are a little bit of code might be a bit scary, but if you aren't able to wrap your head around this or get cla to do it for you, then your hands are tied and you won't be able to get real-time data brought in. You cannot
take meaningful actions of like reaching out to do things for you in the digital world. And the solution to this again
world. And the solution to this again comes back down to using the /create plan and/implement commands. Because
when you ask claw to create a plan and figure out, hey, how how could I automate this part of my work? It can
think, hm, okay, well, I could go search the web and figure out what different tools or what bits of code I could write. and then it can actually
write. and then it can actually implement and create those scripts for you without you having to do it. So the
planning is really important so that you can kick over to claude code the brain work of having to figure out hey what scripts could I plug into this particular workflow. All right so those
particular workflow. All right so those are the biggest mistakes and like I said all of these are kind of already factored into the template. So we'll see those in action in a bit but I want to give you this diagram here which I think is really important. I have to teach this all the freaking time to my team.
So this is the most important diagram to not only claw code but basically any kind of AI usage these days and it's all around context stacking and how you can get things brought up to speed so that it can have an intelligent conversation.
That's what these guys are doing up there. They're having a an intelligent
there. They're having a an intelligent conversation but they're doing that standing on top of all of this context.
So I think of it in layers. Like we need to start with the claw.md file which is just a text file and it contains the purpose of this workspace and kind of gives it an orientation of like who it is, who you are, what the hell is going
on within this workspace. Then on top of that I layer information about the business, whether it's your own business or whether you're working for one. Um
information about you, how you relate to the business and where you fit in, what your roles and responsibilities are. So
the what, the who and the why. Then we
have strategy. So what is your latest like this quarter strategy? without
knowing that it's going to not have the full context and maybe be misaligned with the the objectives that you have right now. And then I like to add on top
right now. And then I like to add on top of that when possible the current data that relates to that strategy whether it's your website views or YouTube data or any kind of data that relates to what you're trying to do within that
workspace. And the reason we have this
workspace. And the reason we have this /prime command which is going to be run every time we start code up is so that it understands everything here and we can start to have an intelligent conversation on top. It's like I'm going
to bring you up to speed. Here's all the documents, but it's important that we have these set up correctly, which is what we're going to be doing in a second. And so, this is incredibly
second. And so, this is incredibly important to understand because this is the key to getting the best results by having it fully contextualized about you and your business and the stuff that you do. Now, the thing is, we don't just
do. Now, the thing is, we don't just have a conversation on top of this. We
actually start to build workflows on top of it. So, that is where we get to what
of it. So, that is where we get to what I call the workflow layer. Maybe let's
bring one of these guys down here. So,
what we have here is our Power Claw code here standing on top of all of that information, right? Every time we start
information, right? Every time we start a new session, we're going to be bringing Claude code up to speed. And
then we're giving our buddy or I mean, I'm not going to assume the bro's gender, but we're going to be giving him or her or it some tools to use. And
these are in the form of markdown files, which is just text files. Example, we're
going to be doing one in a second called analyzing competitors. So, if I want to
analyzing competitors. So, if I want to like for my own podcast, sometimes I want to pull a competitor's podcast and I want to dig into it, figure out, hey, what are they doing? who have they recently uh who have they recently interviewed and be able to figure out
what sort of their positioning is, what are their links are so that I can do a bit further research on my own. All we
need to do to create these reusable tools is to create this markdown file, this text file. Give it a sequence of steps like create a competitor analysis report on X person. Start by researching
Y or using Y cuz claude code has researching built in. Use the Zcript. So
going back to our thing up here how we have scripts as well. So we can reference the scripts that we have in here. So, hey, I want you to pull in
here. So, hey, I want you to pull in some external data with this script and then use the skill, which I'll show you in a bit as well, how we can pull in other people's skills that allow us to add things into these workflows, like
using the PowerPoint skill to be able to create a PowerPoint out of this data.
So, you can see that automating your work is literally as simple as a sequence of uh instructions written in natural language. When your Clawude Code
natural language. When your Clawude Code agent has access to the right information and the right tools, we don't just give one. We can stack a whole bunch depending on any function that you have in your job or role or business. We can stack them. So, another
business. We can stack them. So, another
one for me might be a market scan. Can
you please scan my competitors? I can
make a list of my competitors like 20 people. Um, it's going to read that
people. Um, it's going to read that competitors file. It's going to go out
competitors file. It's going to go out and scan all of theirs and then collect kind of a whole market scan, say, "Hey, for this on the Sunday, I want to see uh where the state of the market is, what sort of trends are popping off. Do a
scan of the market. Come back and give me a presentation on it." And from here, the possibilities really are endless.
You can get it to do basically anything you want. But that is the model. All
you want. But that is the model. All
right. So, this is what we're working towards. a priming command that primes
towards. a priming command that primes them on the context of who we are and what we do. And then we build tasks and workflows on top of that that come in the form of reusable prompts. And so
without further ado, let's jump into this Claude Workspace template that you guys will be able to get for free in the first link in the description. Um you
better download that and then follow along or just watch this and then go have a play around with it after. That's
probably a better way of doing it. And
so in order to open this up and start using it for core code, you're going to want to go to your favorite browser and search up VS Code. You can come here and then come up here and click download.
whatever machine you're on, Mac or Windows, and follow the setup instructions that come with it. I'm sure
you guys can figure that out. And then
the next thing you want to do is go to Claude Code. Click on Claude Code here.
Claude Code. Click on Claude Code here.
And then once you have VS Code open, you're going to want to go to file and open folder. And then you're going to
open folder. And then you're going to want to click on the Claude Workspace template folder that you just downloaded. So it probably come in a
downloaded. So it probably come in a zip. You want to unzip the zip. And then
zip. You want to unzip the zip. And then
it should just be a folder. And then you go file, open folder. And then you'll see something that looks just like this.
So we've opened the folder, the root folder of our workspace, and in it there are all the other folders. The next
thing we need to do is get Claude code installed. What we can do is go to the
installed. What we can do is go to the terminal tab at the top here. Click new
terminal. And then we get this thing down the bottom here. And this is important that you get very familiar with what's on screen here. We have the side panel which has all of our files and folders. And then up here as our
and folders. And then up here as our editor. So whenever I open up a file, it
editor. So whenever I open up a file, it comes here. I can kind of like command W
comes here. I can kind of like command W uh to close the tab or I can click the X. If I've changed it, I can command S
X. If I've changed it, I can command S to save it and then close it. I like to have my screen split 50/50 here. So I've
got this up the top and I've got these down the bottom. Now this is your computer's terminal. We can run commands
computer's terminal. We can run commands here to get it to do things for us. I
won't over complicate it more than that, but what we want to do is head over to Claude Code. So, just Google Claude
Claude Code. So, just Google Claude Code. It'll come up with this website.
Code. It'll come up with this website.
We want to copy this. Uh, head back to VS Code. And then you can just paste it
VS Code. And then you can just paste it in here and press enter. Now, it's going to take you to a setup wizard and ask you to do a few things. Pretty damn
straightforward to do. All you're going to need is either a Claude uh Pro or Max account. So, whether you have a a paid
account. So, whether you have a a paid subscription for Claude already, uh, if you have that, then you can just choose to use the Clawude uh account that you already have. If you don't have one and
already have. If you don't have one and you don't want to get a clawed account, you can go to console.anthropic.com.
You can sign up for a developer or a business account here. And once you've created your account, you can go to settings, set up your billing. You'll
want to add a card on file here and then add five bucks into your balance. Uh
just so that it's show that you've credited it and your card is good. And
then you'll be able to go to API keys down here, create an API key. Copy that.
Then go back to VS Code and select the API key option and paste it in. Once
it's all set up and you should have something like this and you'll be able to type in Claude and actually wait I will not jump ahead there. If you want to clear this so say I've written I've said a whole bunch of rubbish here. If I
go command K then it's going to clear it. That's a nice one to know. Just
it. That's a nice one to know. Just
command K. Um you can rightclick and go kill terminal if you want to start fresh and just start a new terminal here. But
what you want to do now is type in claude which is a command to start cla code and it's going to get it running here. So here we have it. I know it
here. So here we have it. I know it might not look like much but this is your gateway to insane levels of productivity. Now, the first thing you
productivity. Now, the first thing you need to set up with Claude Code is something that I found to save so much time because, as I've said, we always want to be spinning up a new version of Claude Code so that we're starting with the minimal amount of context bloat possible. So, as you can see here, I've
possible. So, as you can see here, I've just asked Claude Code to uh look up these commands that I already have set up. And it's going to write a little
up. And it's going to write a little file for me here because as you see here, it's asking me like, hey, do I have permission to do all of this stuff?
Naturally, Claude Code is quite hesitant and it's always asking permission to do certain things. Now, you can say yes,
certain things. Now, you can say yes, allow all edits during the session, but it gets a bit repetitive and honestly wastes a ton of time. So, what these two commands here are are basically ways of starting Claude in what's called dangerously skip permissions mode or
yolo mode or whatever you want to call it. Basically, this means that Claude is
it. Basically, this means that Claude is not going to ask permission to do things. It may sound scary, but if you
things. It may sound scary, but if you have it within a a a world context like this, it is completely fine to use. I
mean, I'm not taking any liability for that, but I've never had an issue. None
of my team members have had an issue.
Just don't put stupid stuff in here.
Don't hook it up to a live production database, which you won't be doing anyway. So, you are good to do this. But
anyway. So, you are good to do this. But
what this gives us is allows us to skip over all of these hey yes no yes no uh like yes you can do that but because we're going to be spinning up claude code so often we want to be able to start it in that yolo mode every time
and we also want to automatically run our / prime command. So as I explained before our prime command is really important because we're going to be using this at the start of every claude session. So this is one of our commands
session. So this is one of our commands over here just a bunch of text and Claude is going to read this and do what it says. So, it's going to basically
it says. So, it's going to basically look at all of the files in this project. Get an idea of all the
project. Get an idea of all the different files and where they're located. It's going to read our claw.md,
located. It's going to read our claw.md,
which is that base level of context.
It's going to read everything in the context folder here. So, dot slash means in the root directory. So, dot / context means in the root. We're going to go slash and go into this context folder
here. So, if you close them all down,
here. So, if you close them all down, we've got slashcontent, we've got slash outputs and so on. So, this is just saying go into context and read everything that's inside it. and then
after reading come back to us giving a brief summary of who I am, what this workspace is for and so on. And because
the prime command is what we want to have run every time, we want a way of easily starting Claude in YOLO mode and also ensuring that it always runs the prime command. So if you see here, this
prime command. So if you see here, this will be included in uh the project file for you. So you guys can just copy this and paste it into claude code. I've already got it set up,
claude code. I've already got it set up, but this sets up two aliases, CS and CR.
CS is for claude safety, which just runs the prime command. So, this is if you want to run it in that permissions mode where it's always asking for yes or no.
I basically never run it in CS, but it is there if you want it. But that's
going to prime it and you're ready to go in safe mode. And then I have CR, which is clawed risky. And that's running Claude uh skip permissions or YOLO mode and then gets it to automatically run the prime command. So, what you guys
want to do is to copy this and head to your power cord code down here and say, "Hey, can you set up this please?" Paste
it in. It may ask for permission a couple of times, but trust me, you can just say yes. And then you'll have the ability to do this. So if I kill this terminal, open up a new one, and I go
CR. Hell, I might even do two side by
CR. Hell, I might even do two side by side. So you can see I can go CR and CR
side. So you can see I can go CR and CR and spin up two of them side by side.
You can see bypass permissions is on.
That means yolo mode is on and it's automatically running a / prime. So you
can see it's going to read the workspace context. It's going through this prompt
context. It's going through this prompt here. You can see that it's reading all
here. You can see that it's reading all of those context files and then we get a summary back. So, it's really important
summary back. So, it's really important to get Claude to send that information back to us and give us that summary.
It's like, hey, this is a fresh clawed workspace. It has all of the
workspace. It has all of the placeholders. My role is to serve you as
placeholders. My role is to serve you as an agent assistant. Here's the workspace structure. Here's what is yet to be
structure. Here's what is yet to be defined and I'm ready to assist and so on. So, that is just it repeating back
on. So, that is just it repeating back to you, confirming that it understands the environment it's working in. That's
so important to make sure that we're standing on that on that base that allows us to have an intelligent conversation. And so, here we have two
conversation. And so, here we have two instances of Claude code side by side, primed and ready to go. And if you want to be able to create more, like when I'm doing development, I'll have even more of these ops. This is just me pressing
command and then the button below delete, command backslash, and that allows you to very quickly open up a new terminal. So, command backslash and go
terminal. So, command backslash and go CR. So, that's the workflow you're going
CR. So, that's the workflow you're going to be using a lot because sometimes you want to kick off a create plan, sometimes you want going to want to kick off an implement. But that is the basics of how to use this workspace. Now, let
me walk you through a little bit more on each of these documents and why they've been set up in this template this way.
So, we'll start with the context building from the base up. We have the claw.mmd file here. This is a template
claw.mmd file here. This is a template that's going to be changed around by you as you go. So, when you are making changes using the create plan command, it is instructed in here very clearly that uh the claude.md should always be
kept up to date with what is in the in the project. So, that is already baked
the project. So, that is already baked in. You don't need to worry about that.
in. You don't need to worry about that.
But, this gives Claude every time it spins up, Claude is going to read this and also the context file. This is
basically the overview of the whole workspace and what it's supposed to do.
Then we have the scripts which you're aware of. Reference is a folder that you
aware of. Reference is a folder that you can kind of figure out what you want to put in it. It might be a outreach template that you wanted to have access to. It might be a list of your
to. It might be a list of your competitors, but reference is just for any docs that don't fit into the other ones. Plans are for using the plan
ones. Plans are for using the plan command. It will automatically put the
command. It will automatically put the completed plan into the plan folder, which you'll see in a second. We have
the outputs. So, in this case, you're going to see me creating like competitor analysis reports, and they're going to be put into the outputs there. Then we
have the context. And each of these four documents have a purpose. So the
business context is kind of layer one.
Uh I've got a bit of a kind of primer in here for you guys to fill out because you do need to get this information really dialed in. So you can fill these templates out yourself or with Claude's help. We've got the personal info, which
help. We've got the personal info, which is who you are and how you relate to the business. You've got the strategy
business. You've got the strategy document on like what sort of quarterly or yearly or project based strategies are in play right now. And then you've got the current data. And for current data, you can either copy information
off of your analytics or wherever it is, or you can connect it up using a script, do in a more automated way, pull your latest data, and update this document, but I'm not going to touch on that within this tutorial. And the last things we need to look at are these two commands here of create plan, which
we're about to use in a second. This is
your kind of workhorse uh command or prompt that allows you to do stuff within this workspace in a very very efficient way. It basically says create
efficient way. It basically says create a detailed implementation plan for changes to this workspace. And then when you run this command, as we will in a second, it takes the input that you put in and goes, okay, now I'm going to flesh this out into a big plan. It's
going to read the whole workspace, understand what files are where. It's
going to again refresh itself on the workspace. It's going to write a full
workspace. It's going to write a full plan breaking down why it matters, the specific files that need to be changed.
So you can, it really can comprehensively change the workspace without you having to chat back and forth and do all of this messing around.
And once it's created that plan, we then pass it into this implement command where it's going to take that plan file and then ask Claude code to fully implement it and give us an update at the end of it when it's done. So that
might not seem super clear, but let's just jump into having a play around with it. And I think things will start to
it. And I think things will start to make a lot more sense. So here we have Claude Code and we're ready to start giving it some input. So to use any of our commands, you just go slash and then type in the command. So create plan. I'm
going to press tab to fill that out and then I can type into it what I want it to create a plan for. So in my case, I'm going to talk into it. I highly
recommend if you guys aren't already using something like Whisper Flow here.
Uh Whisper Flow is something that allows you to very quickly uh talk into your computer. It's going to transcribe your
computer. It's going to transcribe your voice and immediately dump stuff in. And
when you're working in this kind of AI workflow workspace uh environment, being able to talk into it and dump a lot of information onto Claude Code um or any of your AI tools and let it kind of figure it out from there is a very it's
not super precise workflow, but it's definitely a lot faster than typing. So,
here we go. So in this case for me I want to turn this workspace into one that I can use to manage my podcast. I
have podcast where we have guests on talking about their success with AR business, what's working, what's not, new tools that came out and so on. And
part of running that podcast is doing computer analysis. So I'm actually going
computer analysis. So I'm actually going to swap out a few of these files here and just delete these because uh you need to go and change those and update them to be uh related to you. In this
case, I can pretend like I've already done it because I have.
And I'm going to put these in as context. Then actually because I've
context. Then actually because I've added that context and things have changed around, I'm going to kill these terminals because they've been primed with the wrong information. I'm going to start up a new terminal.
Going to go CR. And so while that's priming, I have two documents in here.
One is the about Liam and about me and my businesses. And then I have our
my businesses. And then I have our podcast strategy and a bit of context on that. So what I actually want to do as
that. So what I actually want to do as the first step to set this up is to write a plan that's going to analyze your two documents and then update the claude.md and anything else that it
claude.md and anything else that it thinks is relevant to be aligned with this purpose of the workspace. So this
is the first step that you guys are going to have to do. So I can go /create plan. Okay, I want to set up this
plan. Okay, I want to set up this workspace as a podcasting workspace to help do things for my podcast. I have
provided context files about me and about my podcast. And what I want you to do is put together a plan to update the claude.mmd and any other parts of this
claude.mmd and any other parts of this workspace to properly reflect the purpose of this as being a hub where claude is going to assist me in doing all the key functions of writing my podcast. Things like competitor analysis
podcast. Things like competitor analysis and market scans. All of these are things that I'm going to build in future. Um so probably don't include
future. Um so probably don't include those just yet because I'll get you to plan those later. But can you please make a plan to figure out how how we can update this workspace to be fully aligned with this podcasting purpose?
It's probably just going to start with the claw.md file. So basically, I'm just
the claw.md file. So basically, I'm just saying this needs to be fully aligned around this new function and we're going to see what it says. And if you want to get the cool icons like I have here on my folders, you can come in and find
different themes. I think uh material
different themes. I think uh material theme is what I have or icons. I don't
know if it's VS Code icons or material theme icons, but it makes them look a little bit cooler. It's kind of nice.
Okay, so here you can see it has created the plan for us. If you press command and click, it's going to open it up. And
here it has written a plan. This was
definitely overkill for just changing the MD file here if I'm honest, but it shows you the workflow that we're going to go through for these changes. So, as
you can see here, the planning is extremely thorough and absolutely overkill for what we're trying to do here. But it shows you just how detailed
here. But it shows you just how detailed it is. It's about these are the new
it is. It's about these are the new files to create, these are the files to modify, the the key decisions made, gives all the context needed, and then what we're able to do is we're able to then use the /implement command and then
actually implement this plan. So, copy
this, paste it in here, and then if you run this, it's going to make all of those changes for you all in one go. Or
it's going to make a big list for Claude to do and it's going to tick tick tick tick tick until it's all fully reshaped.
But in this case, I'm just going to say that was overkill. Can you please just update the claw MD file? But you get the idea. If you're making major changes,
idea. If you're making major changes, you're always going to want to use a plan step. take that plan, pass it into
plan step. take that plan, pass it into the implement command, and then it's going to fully implement it throughout the workspace, making sure everything is fully aligned and change it at the same time. Now, if we go to the clawd file
time. Now, if we go to the clawd file here, we can see that it's changed. This is
the command center for running AI for the rest of us, Liam's interview podcast, focus on AI from Bootstrap Business Perspective, and it's given context around what this workspace is and the commands that are in it as it currently stands. All right, so now that
currently stands. All right, so now that our claw.md and everything about this
our claw.md and everything about this workspace is fully aligned around what we're trying to do here, I'm going to command S to save that.
And you can see the plans end up in the plans folder here. If you ever need to go back to them, I'm going to save that, too. And now we get into the fun bit of
too. And now we get into the fun bit of actually taking a workflow and sort of putting the cherry on top out of all of the stuff that we've done. We fully
contextualize the workspace. We've added
in our context documents. Now, we get to go to the fun part of actually creating our custom commands to do things for us.
So the example I'm going to use here is an analyze competitor command which is going to take in a podcast name or any other information about a podcast might be a person's name and then I'm going to get Claude code to research the person,
use an external API like ampify to pull more information in about real time uh data on the channel's videos and then use a PowerPoint skill to be able to turn that into a PowerPoint presentation for me. So we're going to do a lot in
for me. So we're going to do a lot in this all in one go. You could and probably should as a beginner chop this into baby steps and say, "Hey, I just want to start off with just searching the web. And then I'm going to add in
the web. And then I'm going to add in the external data. And then I'm going to add in the PowerPoint, but we're going to just yolo it and try to get all four done at once." So, what I'm going to do is spin up a new claw code. Command
backslash there. CR. Get a fresh one going. Then I'm going to start writing
going. Then I'm going to start writing this up actually. So, create plan. I
want to All right. So, here's the plan.
I've already done a bit of thinking on this, but if you're a bit more of a beginner and you don't really know that these things exist as I'm going to go through and point some of them out, you can kind of just say, "Hey, I want to do this. Can you figure out how like in it
this. Can you figure out how like in it say search the web to figure out the best way to do XYZ or I want to connect to this and pull the data in. Can you
figure out the best ways or the best options? In this case, I'm saying I want
options? In this case, I'm saying I want to create a new command called /analyze competitor which will do the following.
It will take in the name of a person or a podcast. It will use one claude code
a podcast. It will use one claude code deep research agent which is a thing where it can prompt it to say go into background research mode. That's much
more powerful way of searching. It's
kind of like deep research but for claude code. Um so I want to trigger one
claude code. Um so I want to trigger one of these background research agents which will go on the web to find all the links of the podcast background information positioning of the pod information on the host etc. Then I want to use the MTP integration skill up
here. So this basically is a skill that
here. So this basically is a skill that shows our claude code when it needs to how to use MTPs. MTPs in this case is just allowing us to easily connect to Apify which is a a platform which we'll
go into in a second that has tons and tons of you of of scrapers. So I can connect to Ampify. I can use one of these scrapers to pull in this case YouTube data. So it's going to take the
YouTube data. So it's going to take the URL that it found in that first step of research. It's going to go onto a
research. It's going to go onto a YouTube scraper and it's going to allow me to pull the real-time data from that channel on the on the YouTube views of the 20 most recent videos. And then I want it to take all this information,
write me a research report and markdown or MD that provides a full competitor analysis breakdown. And then finally, I
analysis breakdown. And then finally, I want to install the PowerPoint or PPTX claude skill and use that as the final step to turn that research report into a presentation for me to skim visually. So
doing tons and tons of work here. That's
the point of creating a plan is that we can get Claude code to go and do all this thinking and come back to us with a plan on how to implement it. So as you can see, Claude Code is going away and doing all the research for me on how to create this or how to automate this part
of my workflow. Now here it is downloading the clawed PowerPoint skill and also the MCP required for the YouTube scraping. And here we go. It is
YouTube scraping. And here we go. It is
created our plan here. So we can skim through it. It wants to do this. It's
through it. It wants to do this. It's
got a good summary. So it's made all the key decisions about the background agent, the MCP integration, claude skills for PPTX, and then it's got step-by-step tasks for it to take action
to actually do this. So we're all good to take this now and go.
There we go. If we just press tab, it already had it filled in for us. and we
can send that off to do the work for us.
So, we just kick back and we wait. So,
here it's asking us a few questions for the Appify API token. I'm going to head to Appify and grab an API key for this.
So, Appify is a great one for you guys to have a play around with. Very easy to sign up, very low cost as well, but it gives you access to tons and tons of scraping abilities. Very easy to
scraping abilities. Very easy to integrate through MCP, which is what we're using for this. So, create an account on Ampify if you want to. While
we're waiting for that, I'm going to go to the Claude Skills Marketplace. Uh,
this one here, skillsmpp.com, I think.
So, this is like a marketplace for Claude Skills if you want to pull some functionality in. In this case, I want
functionality in. In this case, I want to find a PowerPoint one. It doesn't
look like Claude Cob was able to find the one that I like to use. So, I can come onto this marketplace here. Great
thing for you guys to do is just come and have a have a look around on this.
I'm going to go back to home. Then, I'm
going to go PPTX. And here, this is the one from Anthropic. I'm going to download this as a zip. While that's
doing its thing, we can come back to Ampify here. You'll need to set up your
Ampify here. You'll need to set up your billing. In my case, I'm just going to
billing. In my case, I'm just going to go to settings. Going to go API and integrations.
And our skill has successfully downloaded. I'm going to create a new
downloaded. I'm going to create a new one, set an expiration date so you guys don't steal it. And then I'm going to copy this, head back over here, and say
here is my API key for Apify.
And then I'm going to unzip this agent skill and I'm going to move it into my skills folder. And I say also I just added this. So read that,
understand it, and get it integrated into this build. To pause it, as you saw me pause it there, it's just pressing escape and it will stop code. You can
give it some more information. Then it
will continue on. So it's going to continue with this implement command here. Just now that the bit more
here. Just now that the bit more information that I've given it, right?
So here we can see it is going through and doing all the steps as laid out in the plan. So it has created the MCP
the plan. So it has created the MCP configuration to connect us into amplify. It has created the output
amplify. It has created the output directory. So, if we go into outputs
directory. So, if we go into outputs here, there we have competitor analysis.
It's made a new folder inside of our outputs, which has made sense because that's where we want them put. And now
up here, we should see any second the uh command that it's writing is going to pop up here. We'll be able to skim over that before we actually put it into into action. So, we go analyze competitor.
action. So, we go analyze competitor.
It's written the whole command for us to use form a deep competitive analysis.
It's going to take in some information that we provided about who we want it to research, prerequisites around setting up the appy correctly, and then it breaks down the workflow. First step is deep research. Second is amplify scrape.
deep research. Second is amplify scrape.
Then report generation and then PowerPoint presentation. Then it walks
PowerPoint presentation. Then it walks it through exactly what it should be doing at each of these steps, which is great. So this is really comprehensive
great. So this is really comprehensive prompt breaking out everything it needs to do. And as you can see, it's also
to do. And as you can see, it's also updating our claw. MD. And here I'm a bit confused as to why it's made a script. So we can say, why did you make
script. So we can say, why did you make a script? So this is when we do actually
a script? So this is when we do actually use it as kind of a chatbot if we want for some more information. But in the meantime, I'm going to spin up another CR here so that I'm ready to run the actual command for doing a computer
analysis. And we can let that do it. And
analysis. And we can let that do it. And
that'll be kind of the pulling everything together that we've talked about here and seeing this in action.
Oh, and look, it's even gone and updated the plan with an breakdown of the implementation that it's done. So, it's
very nice and keeping everything uh in shape here. So, why did you make a
shape here. So, why did you make a script? Can you just do it for me? So
script? Can you just do it for me? So
you need to get used to just chucking everything back at claude code and it will basic because it can run these commands for you. It doesn't need me to go in and do it myself. Boom. There you
go. And so we have new one primed and ready to go here. It should have full understanding of I'm primed and ready to go. Let's go /analyze competitor Lenny's
go. Let's go /analyze competitor Lenny's podcast. So it says our command here is
podcast. So it says our command here is all ready to use. I'm going to rightclick and close out of that. And
now we just sit here and wait as it does all of our work for us. So we've just automated. Well, we'll see how it goes,
automated. Well, we'll see how it goes, but I'm pretty confident it's going to go and follow all of the steps in this analyze competitor file. And we should get back in this outputs folder in
competitor analysis. Probably a folder
competitor analysis. Probably a folder for Lenny's podcast. It's going to do a research. Oh, there you can see it
research. Oh, there you can see it started a background agent. So, I can go O to see that. So, the deep research agent is cooking away. All right,
people. I had internet issues finishing that off last night, but we are back and I'm here to show you the output that we got from this. So, we ran the prime. It
started the uh deep research agent.
We're searching the web for any information about uh Lenny and his podcast. Deep research agent came back.
podcast. Deep research agent came back.
Then, it's going to prepare the MCP integration. Uh making sure everything's
integration. Uh making sure everything's all good. The MCP and Appy is ready to
all good. The MCP and Appy is ready to go. I did have to play around with the
go. I did have to play around with the Ampify API key. So, I highly recommend I'll leave it in the template for you guys, but here in AENV file is where you can put your tokens. And this is going to be a sort of persistent place for you
to store all your API keys so that your claude code agent can grab the information from there when it needs it.
So once I've got that working properly, then it used the ampify uh MTP to pull a whole bunch of information about the channel uh using the scraper. We have
this YouTube scraper that we are using that uh Claude code figured out that this is the best one for us. It's able
to do a whole bunch of things, but for us it is taking the YouTube URL of Lenny's podcast and pulling back all the information on those latest 20 videos.
So then it pulled a whole bunch of information back. Got the 20 videos. Let
information back. Got the 20 videos. Let
me examine the data structure. And then
it put together the competitive analysis markdown report which we can look at here. Remember click holding command and
here. Remember click holding command and then clicking is what opens those up.
And we have our report here. What you
can do with the markdown file is right click up here and go open preview. And
then you get it nice and pretty in in proper markdown formatting. So massive
reach and product manager space. Silicon
Valley bubble. Um premium monetization.
He's got a newsletter. Here's the name, his background, his handles, positioning, the go-to resource of product managers, etc. So, all of this is great, bringing me up to speed on what this guy's podcast is about and how
often he posts, episode lengths, 1 to two hours, frequency, 1 to two episodes per week, high polish, well edited, and so on. So, this is great for me to just
so on. So, this is great for me to just come up to speed very quickly. And then
we have the final outcome, which is what we're really looking for here, which is it then taking that markdown report that we have here and all the context it has and turning it into a presentation. So
that instead of me having to read that big document, I can just pull up the presentation and we have that uh here.
It's created a couple folders on the left hand side here in our outputs folder. I'm just going to commandclick
folder. I'm just going to commandclick on this. I'm going to drop this down.
on this. I'm going to drop this down.
And here we go. Overview. Great. average
views, posting frequency, engagement rate, top performing videos. So, all of this is real data that's taken from YouTube at the time of running this content strategy, competitive analysis, doing a SWAT analysis of them, which is
great. Strategic recommendations,
great. Strategic recommendations, positioning moves, and so on. So, this
is a full breakdown of a competitor analysis in a spreadsheet that's been able to be done through this analyze competitor command. And this is really
competitor command. And this is really just the start of what I'd do with this workspace if I was turning it into a podcast hub for me. I can do market scans. I can do uh guest research. Hey,
scans. I can do uh guest research. Hey,
I want to research guests. Appify even
has scrapers on here if I try to find them. YouTube channel email extractors.
them. YouTube channel email extractors.
So, I can integrate this app a through MCP. And that's going to then be able to
MCP. And that's going to then be able to take a guest. Say I'd scan Lenny's podcast, figure out what guests were popping off. Or maybe I do a market scan
popping off. Or maybe I do a market scan and figure out that, hey, these certain guests keep getting high views. Then I
could say, okay, research this guest.
And it will kick off a similar research process to what we just did here. And
then I can say great, can you go like slreach out to? Then it could look at an outreach template that I give it from the emails. Then it can use the uh
the emails. Then it can use the uh YouTube channel email scraper here, pull their email from their channel, and then send them an email or at least draft it for me before I'm able to tell it to send it. So I hope you guys can see just
send it. So I hope you guys can see just how crazy this can get, how much you can build into this. But these workflows are really the key thing that I wanted to get like baked into your brain here. The
importance of the priming, right?
Remember, we need to be priming our session every single time when we spin it up. We want to be using new sessions
it up. We want to be using new sessions of claude code as often as possible rather than chatting away non-stop. We
want to be able to say slash do this.
It's as fresh as possible, minimal context. Remember, we've only got
context. Remember, we've only got 200,000 to work with. And then we have the tools on top of it. And we're going to be using those to fire off the actions. And this is our task layer. So,
actions. And this is our task layer. So,
I hope that's been eye opening for you guys on how I'm using Claude code, how I'm teaching my teams to use it. This
setup has completely transformed productivity within our organization.
So, I highly recommend you guys give it a go. The first link in the description
a go. The first link in the description down there will be a link to get this template and just follow the steps that I've showed you in this video on how to set it up. Remember that we have the shells alias here which you need to copy and paste the claw code when you're just getting things set up. So you'll have
quick access to the sort of yolo mode and priming setup here so you can spin this claw code up as quickly as possible. So yeah guys, that's about all
possible. So yeah guys, that's about all for this video. I think I'm going to leave it there. There's a ton more I could show you, but this will give you the sort of starting skills to and the starting template to have a crack at this yourself. And yeah, like I said, I
this yourself. And yeah, like I said, I highly recommend you actually give it a go cuz this is one of this is what everyone who's being super productive using right now. And if you can't figure it out now, you're probably going to get left behind a little bit this year. So
guys, thank you so much for watching.
Leave a like, subscribe if you enjoyed it, you want to see more of the stuff, and check out up here if you want to watch another video from me that's just as good, if not better, than this
Loading video analysis...