Five minutes in, with the setting that matters.
Most setup guides waste your time. They walk you through every menu and every toggle. You don't need that.
You need to be using Claude in five minutes, with the one setting that actually matters turned on. This is that.
Sign up at claude.ai.
Go to claude.ai. Click sign up. Use your work email or your personal email, doesn't matter. Verify, set a password, done.
The free plan is enough for most people for a long time. You don't need to upgrade to start using it well. If you hit a usage limit, you'll know, and you can upgrade then. Don't pay before you need to.
Turn on the one setting that matters.
Click your name in the bottom left corner. Click Settings. Click Profile.
You'll see a field called "What should Claude call you?" and another called "What do you do?" Most people skip these. Don't.
Fill them in like you'd describe yourself to a new coworker. Two sentences each, not more. The first one is your name. The second one is what you actually do day to day. Be specific. "Marketing manager at a small B2B software company" is better than "marketer." "First-grade teacher" is better than "educator."
Why this matters. Claude reads these every time you open a new chat. Every answer it gives you gets shaped by them. Skip them and Claude gives you the generic answer. Fill them in and Claude gives you the answer for someone like you.
The first prompt that proves it works.
Open a new chat. Paste this exactly.
Based on what you know about me from my profile, what's one task in my work week that I could probably hand off to you starting today? Give me one specific suggestion. Tell me what you'd need from me to do it well.
Paste this into a new Claude chat as your very first message.
Read the response. If Claude gave you a real, specific suggestion that fits what you actually do, your profile is set up right. If the answer is generic, your profile isn't specific enough. Go back to Step 2 and rewrite it.
This takes 60 seconds and saves you weeks of bad answers.
Common traps.
- Filling out the profile with a job title and stopping. "Marketing manager" alone tells Claude almost nothing. Add what kind of company, what size, what you actually work on.
- Upgrading to a paid plan before you've sent ten messages. You don't know yet what you'll use Claude for. Don't pay to find out.
- Skipping the first prompt. The point isn't the answer. The point is checking that your profile is doing the work.
- Treating the profile as final. Update it whenever your work changes. It's a setting, not a tattoo.