Use cases

Find your use cases

2 min read

Most people recognize how great a tool Claude is, but don't know where to go from there. A new tool is great, but it is only useful if you know where to use it. That is what this lesson covers. By the end you will be able to look at a normal week and see the work Claude can take off your plate.

The reason "what can AI do for me" is a hard question is that it is too big to answer. You are standing in front of the whole ocean. The useful question is small and concrete: what do I do every week that Claude is also good at doing. You do not need to imagine new work. You need to look at the work you have and recognize the shapes. Here are some examples.

  1. 1Draft

    You mostly know what to say, Claude writes it.

  2. 2Summarize

    Something long, and you only need the short version.

  3. 3Reformat

    The content is right but the format is wrong.

  4. 4Explain

    Plain English, to understand it or to pass it along.

  5. 5Polish

    A draft that exists but is stiff, long, or blunt.

One shape, worked

Take shape two, summarize and condense. You have a meeting transcript from your weekly team meeting. Instead of reading it three times, you paste it into Claude and ask for the condensed version in plain English with any action items. You get a concise summary in seconds. You still read the transcript yourself before you act on anything, that part never moves. But you started from a summary instead of from a wall of text.

Picture a normal Tuesday. None of this looks like "an AI task" until you hold it up to the five shapes.

  • You retype some version of "here is what we still need to file your return" for the third time this week. That is shape one, drafting. Write it once well, reuse it.
  • You have handwritten notes from a phone call that you need to send to another team member. That is shape three, reformatting. Transform your notes into an email.
  • You are reviewing a legal document that is 90 pages long. That is shape four, explaining. Get a clean plain-English version you can understand.

Three use cases in one Tuesday, and they might not have looked like a use for Claude until you knew the shapes.

Here is the cheap tell, the one that keeps working after this lesson is over. Notice the task you dread redoing. The email you write some version of every week. The document you always have to shrink before anyone will read it. That flicker of "not this again" is the signal. It is pointing straight at a use for Claude. Treat the feeling as the prompt.

Your turn

Find three of your own

List three recurring tasks from your week that match one of the five shapes. Name the shape next to each. That list is your starting set.