gluntyClaude Hacks: The Operator Deck
Stop starting over. Build an assistant that already knows your world.
- 01
You are the director
Claude is not an oracle, it is talent waiting for direction. The people who win treat it like a brilliant new hire who needs the brief, not a magic answer box. Weak prompt in, weak everything out.
- 02
Every chat is an amnesiac
A new chat remembers nothing you said in the last one. Context does not travel between conversations unless you deliberately store it. Most people quietly re-explain their whole life every single time.
Assume it knows nothing. Paste the context in, or save it somewhere reusable. - 03
The first answer is a warm-up
Draft one is Claude clearing its throat, not its best work. The gap between amateurs and pros is that pros never stop at the first reply. Push again and the quality jumps.
That was draft one. Make it sharper, shorter, and far less generic. - 04
Make it argue, not agree
Ask Claude if your idea is good and it will flatter you. Ask it to attack the idea and you get the truth you actually needed. A yes-man is useless, a sparring partner is a cheat code.
Argue the opposite of what you just said. Where is my thinking weakest? - 05
It lies with a straight face
Claude will state a wrong fact with total confidence, no flinch, no warning. The fix is not to trust harder, it is to remove the guessing. Hand it your real sources and make it work only from those.
Use only the material I pasted. If the answer is not in there, say you do not know. - 06
Upload once, stop repeating yourself
A Project is a room that holds your instructions plus your uploaded files, standing behind every chat inside it. Drop your specs, brand rules, and background in once. Now you brief Claude a hundred times without pasting a thing.
Verify current Projects features, then load your key docs into a Project's knowledge panel. - 07
Save your best output back
The great answer Claude just wrote is trapped in one dead-end chat. Feed it back into the Project knowledge and it becomes a permanent reference. Your assistant literally gets smarter every week you use it.
- 08
A Style is a saved voice
Stop re-describing the tone you want on every request. A Style captures a reusable voice and format once, then reapplies it on demand. Build one per deliverable: terse notes, polished spec, human marketing copy.
Verify current Styles support, then create one Style per type of thing you regularly produce. - 09
Copy from the artifact, not the chat
When Claude builds something real it lives in a side panel you can revise in place, not buried in scrolling chat text. Iterate on that panel and grab your result straight from it. The chat markdown is a lossy copy, the artifact is the source.
- 10
Fix a bad memory by moving the chat
If Claude forms a wrong lasting impression of a Project, one stray conversation is usually to blame. Pull that chat out of the Project and the wrong summary loses its source. You are editing what your assistant believes about you.
Verify current memory features, then move the offending chat out of the Project. - 11
One instructions file rules them all
The pros keep a single standing brief that defines the role, the rules, and the output format, and let it govern everything. It is the same discipline whether it lives in a repo file or a Project's instructions. Write the constitution once, obey it forever.
Paste your non-negotiable rules into the Project instructions as a permanent brief. - 12
Archive, never delete
Free accounts cap how many Projects you can keep, so people delete old ones and torch the chat history inside. Archiving clears the clutter while keeping everything you made. Deletion is amnesia you inflicted on yourself.
Verify your current plan's Project cap, then archive finished work instead of deleting it. - 13
Build the assistant that knows your world
Stack these and Claude stops being a stranger you re-brief daily. A Project loaded with your rules, your files, and your best past work answers as if it has worked for you for years. Stop prompting a tool, start running a colleague.
Reading is not doing. Wire every node - do it with the tool, log the proof, mark it done. Finish them all to seal DECK COMPLETE (+10).
DECK COMPLETE - +10 banked. Grab another and keep ranking up.