I’ve spent over 1,000 hours inside Claude.
Every. Single. Day.
Building tools. Running workflows… even launching million-dollar companies with it.
And look, you might feel super productive using Claude right now.
But what if I told you you’re barely scratching the surface?
It’s like having a NASA supercomputer… and using it to calculate 2 + 2.
I’m going to walk you through every level of Claude user. From the amateur all the way up to the person who builds systems that run without them lifting a finger.
By the end, you’ll know exactly which level you’re at.
And the one move to level up.
Here goes.
Level 1: The Amateur
The amateur treats Claude like a fancy Google search.
One question in. One answer back. Close the tab.
You’re using maybe 5% of what this thing can do.
I get it though. Everybody starts here. I started here.
But here’s what I’ve come to learn… two tiny tweaks change everything.
Number one: make Claude interview YOU first.
Before it answers, tell it: “Before you answer, ask me any questions you need to do this properly.”
Then watch it pull the context out of you that it needs to give you a way better answer.
Number two: make Claude check its own work.
Just type “check your work.”
It’ll catch its own mistakes… which is kinda annoying, because you’d think it would do that the first time.
But the output gets dramatically better.
That’s it. Do those two things and you’ve already left 90% of people behind.
Level 2: The Regular
The regular treats Claude like a workspace.
They don’t just chat with it. They use Projects.
And a Project is just a dedicated space inside Claude for one thing… one role, one client, one workflow. It’s like giving Claude a desk with your name on it.
The best part? Claude finally remembers who you are every time you come back.
So the work gets better.
Here’s how you set it up the right way:
Step one. On the left side, click “create a new project” and name it after the role you work in. Let’s say… marketing.
Step two. Build a master prompt for that role.
A master prompt is just a file of instructions that tells Claude everything about you. How you like to work. What your team looks like. What tools you use. All of it.
And you don’t even have to write it yourself. Type this in: “Interview me to build a master prompt for my role as a marketer.”
Claude asks. You answer. You get a file.
Step three. Drop that master prompt into the Project files. Then add anything else your biz has… sample data, examples, processes.
Now you’ve got a customized space with memory, context, and your exact way of working baked in.
For me? Every time I sit down to make a YouTube video, I’ve got a Project loaded with my voice document, my branding, my old scripts I love.
I point it in a direction, hit enter… and it hands me outlines built the way I’ve always done them.
Pro tip: take it one level deeper. Ask Claude to interview you and build a system prompt for a specific workflow.
Think of it like this… the master prompt is your ingredients. The system prompt is the recipe.
Same quality. Same format. Every freakin’ time.
Level 3: The Integrator
The integrator plugs Claude into the tools where the work actually lives.
Gmail. Calendar. Drive. Slack. Notion.
Because why would I copy and paste an email into Claude… when I can just tell Claude to go grab the email?
Here’s how you operate at this level:
One: use connectors. Connect your Gmail, your Drive, your Slack, your Notion. Now Claude can search all those places while you chat.
Two: build visualizations. This is one of my favourites. Graphs, bars, mockups… all inside the chat.
Three: build interactive artifacts. These are like little mini-apps. Clickable outputs. Sliders. Buttons. It makes interacting with your info sooooo much easier.
I use this all day.
“Look at my calendar. Tell me what I’m missing.”
“Scan Slack for the last week and give me a CEO-level rundown of what’s going on across the company.”
I run stuff like this every single day so I’m always on top of it.
And here’s a pro tip nobody talks about… install Claude in Chrome.
I’ll have Claude write me a set of instructions, paste it into Claude inside my browser, hit enter… and it goes and does the work for me right there on the page.
At this level, Claude’s helping you.
But the next level? That’s where Claude actually does the work.
Level 4: The Operator
The operator stops being the doer and becomes the director.
This is the human IN the loop. You set up the work, Claude runs it, and you just review and approve.
You stop using Claude… and you start deploying it.
Three ways to do it:
One: system prompts. Have Claude interview you to create one for any type of output you make over and over. I truly believe the future of what makes a team valuable is having system prompts nailed down for the things they create.
Two: skills. As you keep running the same workflows, save them as skills. Claude ships with a bunch already… financial, marketing, all of it. But you can build your own for the proprietary stuff your biz does.
My rule? If I do it more than three times a week, it becomes a skill.
I built a “company status” skill that chews through all my analytics, metrics, reports and team updates… then hands me a clean little snapshot of the whole biz. I type /company status and boom. Done.
Three: schedule Cowork tasks. Cowork is an app that runs on your computer and can literally take the wheel. Kick off a job, hit enter, go have dinner, come back… it’s done.
Every night at 8:00 I get a message that maps out my next day. It reads my email and my calendar and tells me everything I need to know… like I’ve got a chief of staff. And I do. She’s awesome. But I set THIS up because she doesn’t need to.
Set it once. It runs forever. I never think about it again.
Big one here… chain your skills.
A copywriting skill that writes in your voice feeds an email skill… and both get called by a bigger skill that automates your whole inbox.
Level 5: The Builder
Not too long ago, we shut the company down for two days and ran an AI hackathon.
We taught everybody to code.
In 48 hours, my whole team became builders.
Because at this level, you use Claude Code to write code, build custom apps, dashboards, internal tools… Claude isn’t answering questions anymore.
It’s shipping software.
And if you’re already here? You’re in the top 0.04% of people. Most folks have no idea this exists.
Three flavours of building:
- Loops — recurring jobs that run on a server, talk to other agents, use other systems. Always running.
- Tools — one-off builds for a project. Disposable by design.
- Apps — real, production software.
Here’s my favourite proof.
I’ve got this incredible woman named Betty. She’s my house manager… runs life for my wife and I.
She built a system that manages EVERYTHING. The cars, the real estate, the investments, the budgets. All of it.
And she’s not a programmer.
Because in the world of AI, English is the new programming language.
Pro tip: 100% of the time, before I build anything, I use plan mode. You dump your idea, it asks questions, then it writes a full plan you approve BEFORE it writes a single line of code.
People whine, “Dan, these AI apps cost so much!”
It’s because they didn’t plan up front. Plan mode saves you a ton of money.
Pro tip: Claude Code remote. It connects to the Claude app on your phone and keeps writing code while you’re away from your laptop.
I’ve done this three or four times while mountain biking.
…which is also how I ate it on a berm and washed out my front tire. Worth it.
Level 6: The Agent Orchestrator
This is the top of the mountain.
The orchestrator designs an agent that actually runs something. A department. A process. A whole workflow.
And you’re no longer involved.
You just went from the human IN the loop… to the human ON the loop.
Claude stops being a tool and becomes infrastructure.
There’s a million ways to build an agent, so instead of one recipe, here’s a way to THINK about it:
Start with one main agent. Your chief of staff. Your CEO agent. Mine’s called Kai. He doesn’t really do anything himself… he just directs the other agents. I know, I know. It sounds crazy.
Create specialized sub-agents. Each one owns a workflow. Your main agent tells them what to do.
Connect it to your phone. I talk to mine through Telegram. Reese is my real estate agent… he hunts investment deals. Kai checks in with Reese every day and reports back to me.
All of it. Without me touching a thing.
The agents think. They decide. They execute inside the parameters I gave them.
See what’s happening here?
We’re building the machine that runs the machine.
And here’s a pro tip… I’ve got a critique agent whose only job is to review the work. Copywriting, research, whatever. It writes up notes to make it better, hands it back, and the work runs again.
So I always get the best output.
I’m not in the work anymore. I’m on the loop.
So… Which Level Are You?
Here’s the trap most people fall into.
They collect Claude features like Pokémon cards. “Oh I use that. Oh I’ve tried this.”
But they never make it a HABIT.
And a feature you tried once is worth about as much as a gym membership you never use.
So here’s what I need you to do.
Pick ONE level. One feature. And commit to using it 30 days in a row.
Maybe it’s the browser extension. Maybe it’s building your first agent. I don’t know what it is for you.
But go all in.
-DM