Getting good work out of it
The rough-first method
A PowerPoint is slow for Claude to build and slow to change. An HTML or markdown preview appears instantly, so you fix the look in seconds, then build the real thing once.
Ask for an HTML preview or a markdown draft. You react to it in the browser, you never touch the code.
Send all your notes at once: smaller margins, lose the border, wrong colours. Paste in screenshots: show, do not describe. Pile in as many as you like while they are small, similar tweaks.
When it looks right, ask Claude to save a deck_specs.md: the fonts, colours and decisions from your feedback, written down. The chat is disposable; that file is what you keep.
Open a fresh session on the same folder and ask for the real deliverable. The folder carries the memory, not the conversation.
If a tweak is faster by hand than by prompt, do it. Finishing the last ten percent yourself is not cheating, it is good judgement.
Why a chat fills up
Every chat can only hold so much at once, about 200,000 tokens, which is how much it keeps in mind. When it fills up it starts to forget the beginning and the work gets worse. Start a fresh chat for each new task.
A task is one job. Keep the small, similar tweaks together in one chat. Start a new chat when the job itself changes.
Before you start the new chat, ask Claude for a handoff: a short summary of where you got to and what is left. Drop that into the new chat, or keep it in the folder, and you pick up clean without dragging the old chat behind you.
The model generates.
You give the feedback and direct.
Use case · Decks
Claude writes the whole deck in code, then exports it, rather than nudging a PowerPoint around by hand. Faster, cleaner, far easier to restyle. Point it at the brand to follow: H+Co, Plus Also, or a client's.
Title slides and font sizing sometimes need a manual fix at the end. Everything else usually comes out strong. That last nudge is the "prompting is not a religion" moment above.
Save it as a skill → so next time it is one command.
Build a 12-slide deck from the notes in this folder, in the H+Co
house style. Use the brand fonts and colours in /brand. Rough it in
HTML first so I can react to the look, then build the PowerPoint.Use case · Restyle, then keep it
Do the job once, the right way, then turn it into a one-command skill. This is the move that compounds: the second time is instant, and so is the hundredth.
It is also the natural on-ramp to the next page. A skill is those instructions, saved with a name.
Export the chart slides you want to match and put them in a folder. Claude reads the type, layout and chart styling straight off them.
Have Claude apply your colours, fonts and grid to the charts. React in a rough preview, then lock the look.
Give it a name, like /restyle-chart. Next time it is one command, no re-explaining. Those are your instructions, kept. See skills.
Use case · Images
Point Claude at the deck through Google Workspace. It reads every slide, works out every image the deck needs, writes a Nano Banana Pro prompt for each, generates them, and places them back in the slides. You review the options and keep the ones that work.
Image generation runs on the fal-studio plugin, billed to the team. Install it once, then ask in plain English.
Give it reference images for any recurring character or product. Without them it will happily invent something off-brief, the way "Petra and Barnaby" once came out as weird animals.
Save it as a skill → so next time it is one command.
Read this deck in Google Workspace and find every image we need to
generate. Write me prompts to make these with Nano Banana Pro, then
generate them and place them back into the deck. Use the reference
shots in /refs for any recurring product or character.Plain English, ready to copy
Plain English, not prompt engineering.
Read my Granola notes from the brief, pull the relevant frames from our Figma file, and build a first-draft deck in Google Slides using our template.
Catch me up on everything I missed today: pull from Outlook, calendar, Linear and Granola.
Read the five PDFs in this project folder, tell me where they agree and where they don't, and save the findings to Drive.
Pull the reference image from our Figma file, write a prompt that recreates the look, generate three options, and save them to the project folder in Drive.
Write a video prompt for this scene, generate it, and drop the file in the Slack channel with a one-line note on what it is.
Build a spec sheet from these brand guidelines: every font, weight, colour and hex, in one table in Figma.
Take the amends marked up on this PDF, and turn them into a clear checklist.
Check my Linear tickets and my calendar, tell me what's overdue or blocked, and build me a realistic plan for tomorrow.
Pull the three latest reports from Drive, combine them into one plain one-page summary, and email it round to the team.
Create a logo pack for this SVG: RGB, CMYK and PMS versions, in these colours.
Take this morning's Granola transcript, write it up as a one-page brief, save it to the project folder in Drive, and drop a link in the Slack channel.
Grab the latest copy doc from Drive, add it to a new Slides doc, reformat every slide to our template, and flag where it doesn't fit.
Find me the brief from this morning and open it in Safari.
Take the campaign idea from this Granola note, write ten image prompts in a consistent style, generate them, and lay them out in a Figma board for review.
Read these brand guidelines, pull out the rules for logo, colour and type, and turn them into a short checklist in Drive.
Take these twenty product shots, restyle them all to the same look, and put them back in a clean, renamed folder.
Check this artwork against our brand guidelines and flag anything off: wrong colours, logo spacing, fonts.
Search my Granola notes and Drive for everything we've said about [topic], and pull it into one summary doc.
What is this brief? Pull out the actionable items for me.
Grab the product shot from Drive, drop it onto the billboard mockup in our Figma file, match the lighting, and post it in Slack for sign-off.
Research [competitor], write a plain one-pager with sources, save it to Drive, and post the headline in Slack.
Go through this Google Doc, fix the British English and anything inconsistent, leave it all as suggestions, and post a summary of the changes in Slack.
Sort and rename this messy folder so I can find things, and tell me what's missing.
Turn this script into a storyboard, write a prompt for every frame, generate the frames, and lay them out in order in Figma.
Look at my calendar this week, find where I'm over 60% meetings, suggest what to move, and draft the messages to reschedule.
Source ten reference examples of [thing] from the web, save them to this folder, and lay them out in Figma with notes.
Read my deck, write speaker notes for each slide, and add them straight into the Google Slides file.
Go through last quarter's project folders in Drive, pull every final logo into one folder, and list which projects had none.
Take these reference images and build a moodboard in Figma, grouped by theme.
Go through this folder of exports, check every file is named to our convention and the right size, and rename the ones that aren't.
Help me fill in my timesheets: use my Outlook calendar and Granola notes, pull in Harvest Forecast if it helps, and flag anywhere you're unsure so I can fill the gaps.
The real work is the folder, not your prompt. Keep the brief, your notes, the brand files and the deliverables together in one folder, and that becomes Claude's context. With the right things in the folder, the exact words of your prompt barely matter. The context is what makes the work good.