Set Up Claude AI in 15 Minutes: A No-BS Guide

There are a hundred AI tools vying for your attention right now. Most of them want your money before you understand what they do. Here’s a guide that skips the marketing and gets you working with one of the best ones — Claude, made by Anthropic — in about 15 minutes.

Full disclosure: We use Claude internally at FIT. It’s our primary AI tool for managing documentation, drafting client communications, analyzing data, and running business operations. Our internal system, Codex Blu, is built on Claude. So yes, we’re biased. But we’re biased because we use it every day and it works. We’re not getting paid to say this.

Let’s get you set up.

What Is Claude?

Claude is a large language model built by Anthropic. Think of it as a very capable writing and analysis assistant that you interact with through conversation. You type a question or a task, Claude responds.

It’s similar to ChatGPT, but there are meaningful differences. Claude tends to be more careful with facts (it’ll tell you when it’s unsure rather than confidently making things up), handles long documents well, and is strong at following detailed instructions. It’s also built by a company that takes AI safety seriously, which matters more than most people realize.

What it is: A conversational AI that can write, analyze, summarize, code, brainstorm, and explain.

What it isn’t: A search engine, a database, or a sentient being. It doesn’t browse the internet in real-time (unless you give it access to web search tools), and it can be wrong.

Free vs. Pro: Which Do You Need?

Claude Free (claude.ai)
– No cost
– Access to Claude’s current model
– Usage limits (you’ll hit a cap during heavy use and need to wait)
– Good enough to evaluate whether Claude is useful for you

Claude Pro ($20/month)
– Higher usage limits
– Priority access during peak times
– Access to the most capable models (like Claude Opus)
– File uploads and analysis
– Projects feature for organizing conversations with persistent context

Our recommendation: Start free. Use it for a week. If you’re hitting the usage cap regularly, Pro is worth it. If you’re a business using it daily, Pro pays for itself the first time it saves you an hour of writing or analysis work.

Getting Started: 5 Minutes

Go to claude.ai
Click “Sign Up” — Use your email or Google account
Verify your email if prompted
You’re in. That’s it. No credit card for the free tier.

You’ll land in a conversation interface. There’s a text box at the bottom. Type something. Claude responds. That’s the whole interface.

No configuration needed. No plugins to install. No settings to tweak before you start. Just start talking to it.

First 3 Things to Try

Don’t start with “tell me a joke” or “write me a poem.” Start with something that actually saves you time.

1. Summarize a Document

Upload a PDF, paste in a long email chain, or drop in a report. Then ask:

“Summarize this document in 5 bullet points. Focus on action items and deadlines.”

This is where Claude shines. It handles long, dense documents well and can pull out the signal from the noise. Board meeting minutes, grant reports, policy documents, vendor contracts — anything you’d normally spend 20 minutes reading, Claude can distill in 30 seconds.

Try this: Take the longest email you received this week. Paste the whole chain into Claude. Ask: “What are the key decisions made in this thread, and what’s still unresolved?”

2. Draft an Email

Give Claude context and let it write the first draft:

“Draft a professional email to our board treasurer. We need to reschedule the Q1 budget review from March 3 to March 10 due to a conflict with the grant deadline. Keep it brief and friendly.”

Claude will give you a clean draft in seconds. You edit it to match your voice, and you’re done. The value isn’t that Claude writes perfectly in your voice — it’s that it eliminates the blank-page problem. Editing a draft is always faster than writing from scratch.

Try this: Think of an email you’ve been putting off. Give Claude the context and ask it to draft it. You’ll send it within five minutes.

3. Analyze Data

If you have a spreadsheet or a table of numbers, paste it in (or upload the file on Pro) and ask questions:

“Here are our monthly expenses for the last 12 months. What are the three biggest areas of spending growth? Are there any anomalies?”

Claude can spot patterns, calculate changes, and flag things that look unusual. It’s not a replacement for your accountant, but it’s a powerful first pass that turns raw numbers into a conversation.

Try this: Take a recent financial report or donor list. Ask Claude to identify trends or flag anything that looks unusual.

Writing Good Prompts: The 80/20

You don’t need a PhD in prompt engineering. Here are the principles that cover 80% of what makes a good prompt:

Be specific about what you want. “Write a blog post” is vague. “Write an 800-word blog post about cybersecurity basics for nonprofit executive directors who aren’t technical” gives Claude enough to work with.

Give context. Claude doesn’t know your organization, your audience, or your goals unless you tell it. A sentence or two of background makes a massive difference.

Tell it the format you want. Bullet points? A table? A formal letter? A casual Slack message? Say so. Claude will match the format you ask for.

Tell it what to avoid. “Don’t use jargon” or “Don’t include a sales pitch” or “Keep it under 200 words” — constraints make better output.

Iterate. The first response is a starting point. Say “make it shorter,” “more formal,” “add a section about X,” or “that second paragraph isn’t right — here’s what I actually meant.” Claude handles follow-up instructions well.

Here’s a real-world prompt template that works for almost anything:

“You are a [role]. I need you to [task]. The audience is [who]. The tone should be [style]. Include [specifics]. Keep it [constraints].”

Example:

“You are a grant writer. I need you to draft a 500-word project narrative for a community health grant. The audience is the Minnesota Department of Health review committee. The tone should be professional but accessible. Include our outcomes data from 2025. Keep it focused on measurable impact.”

That’s not magic. It’s just clear communication. If you can explain a task to a capable employee, you can write a good prompt.

Limitations: What Claude Can’t Do

Being honest about limitations is more useful than hype. Here’s where Claude falls short:

It doesn’t know what happened today. Claude’s training data has a cutoff. It doesn’t browse the news in real-time unless it has specific web search tools enabled. Don’t ask it for yesterday’s stock prices or this morning’s headlines.

It can be wrong. Confidently wrong, sometimes. This is called “hallucination” in AI terminology. Claude is better than most models at admitting uncertainty, but it’s not perfect. Always verify important facts, especially names, dates, statistics, and legal information.

It doesn’t remember between conversations. Each new conversation starts fresh (unless you’re using the Projects feature on Pro, which gives it persistent context). It won’t remember what you talked about last Tuesday unless you tell it again.

It can’t take action. Claude can draft an email, but it can’t send it. It can write a report, but it can’t file it. It’s an assistant, not an autonomous agent. (This is actually a feature, not a bug — you stay in control.)

It’s not a licensed professional. Don’t use Claude as your lawyer, doctor, or accountant. Use it to prepare for conversations with those professionals. There’s a big difference.

How FIT Uses Claude

We practice what we preach. At FIT, Claude operates as Codex Blu — our internal AI system for:

Documentation management — Maintaining our knowledge base across hundreds of files
Client communications — Drafting onboarding materials, proposals, and reports
Business operations — Tracking projects, analyzing expenses, planning workflows
Technical research — Evaluating tools, comparing platforms, writing procedures

It’s not a gimmick or a demo. It’s integrated into how we work every day. When we help clients think about AI integration, we’re drawing on real operational experience, not theoretical frameworks.

What’s Next

You’ve got Claude set up. You’ve tried three real tasks. You have a framework for writing good prompts, and you know where the guardrails are.

From here, just use it. The best way to learn what AI can do for your workflow is to throw real work at it for a couple of weeks. You’ll quickly find the patterns where it saves you serious time and the areas where it’s not helpful.

If you want to go deeper — integrating Claude into your team’s workflows, setting up Projects for persistent context, or thinking about AI strategy for your organization — that’s what we do at FIT. We offer AI consulting specifically for small businesses and nonprofits who want practical implementation, not buzzwords.

Reach out anytime. The first conversation is always free.