What Claude is, what it's good at, and where to start.
The full script, word for word — 514 words, about 2 minutes to read. Current as at July 2026. AI tools change quickly; if something looks different when you try it, check the product's own help pages.
Hi — I'm Mel, and this is Claude: the AI assistant made by Anthropic. In the next few minutes you'll know what Claude is and what it can do. Think of this as the map — most of what I touch on gets its own short video if you want to go deeper.
This is home: the chat. You type, Claude answers — questions, drafting, thinking things through, summarising something long. You can attach files with the plus button in the message box, and conversations can run as long as you need. And up top, an incognito button that starts a temporary chat and is not kept in recent chats history.
Down here you'll see a model name — that's the brain Claude is using. The default is right for almost everything; there are faster models when you want speed and deeper ones, like Fable, when you want more thinking.
There are two ways into Settings: click your name in the bottom-left, or Customise in the left-side menu. Inside, you'll find custom instructions — they let you tell Claude about your background, your communication style, and how you like to work. Set once so you never have to re-introduce yourself. Memory takes this further: Claude builds on what it learns about you over time. And you're in control of privacy: there's a toggle called "Help improve our AI models", which most people switch off.
Artifacts are what you get when you ask Claude to build something rather than answer something. A working dashboard. An interactive quiz. A landing page. A finished object, shareable via link — not a block of text buried in a chat.
And for ongoing work, there are projects — workspaces where you park the files and instructions for one piece of work, so every conversation about it starts informed.
Back in Settings, under Customise, there's an option called Skills. Skills teach Claude repeatable ways of working — how you build a report, your presentation standards — written once, used forever.
Right next to Skills sits Connectors. Connectors plug Claude into your actual tools: your email, your calendar, your files, Microsoft 365.
One more thing to know exists: Claude doesn't only live in a chat window. Cowork lets Claude work directly in a folder on your computer — reading, creating, and organising real files — and it's now reaching the web and mobile too.
There's also Claude Code for developers. Same Claude, but in a workspace built for coding — it works directly with the files in a project, writing and testing as it goes.
And Claude in Chrome for your browser, plus add-ins for Excel and PowerPoint. There's Claude Design too — describe a visual, a page, a deck, and watch it get built. Different doors, same Claude.
That's the map: chat, artifacts, memory, projects, skills, connectors — and a whole family of places Claude shows up. Start simple: open a chat and give it something real from your day — this is the first step in making Claude truly yours. Good luck and see you in the next one.