How to Use Claude in Your Daily Work
You can use Claude for summarising documents, drafting emails and reports, interpreting data, explaining or writing code, brainstorming ideas, and improving existing text. Upload a document or paste text, write a clear prompt describing what you want, and Claude responds in natural language. The quality of the output depends mainly on how specific your prompt is.
Claude can handle document analysis, drafting, coding, and brainstorming. Here are six concrete use cases with example prompts you can apply directly.
Summarising and Analysing Documents
Upload a PDF, contract, or report and ask Claude to extract specific information. Example prompt: “Read this supplier contract and list the key obligations, deadlines, and termination clauses.” Or: “Summarise this annual report in three paragraphs, covering revenue trends, risks, and strategic priorities.” Claude reads the full document and returns structured output. This works well for documents you need to review quickly without reading every page. For background on why Claude is strong at long documents, read What is Claude by Anthropic.
Drafting Emails and Reports
Give Claude a rough brief and let it draft the first version. Example: “Write a professional email to a client explaining that the project timeline has shifted by two weeks due to data delivery delays. Keep the tone calm and solutions-focused.” Then edit the result. This is faster than starting from a blank page, especially for difficult messages where you want to get the tone right before writing anything yourself.
Interpreting Data
Paste a table, export, or summary of data and ask Claude what it means. Example: “Here is our monthly sales by region for the past year. Which regions show declining trends and what could explain them?” Claude can identify patterns, suggest hypotheses, and flag anomalies. It does not replace a proper data analyst, but for quick interpretation of numbers you already have, it saves significant time.
Explaining or Writing Code
Claude is strong at writing code across most languages and explaining what existing code does. Example: “Write a Python script that reads a CSV file, removes duplicate rows, and saves the result.” Or: “Explain what this SQL query does and whether there are any performance issues with it.” If you want to build Claude into a product or automation, the Claude API gives you access without the chat interface.
Brainstorming and Working Through Decisions
Use Claude as a thinking partner when you are stuck. Example: “I am deciding whether to hire a freelancer or a full-time employee for a specific role. Here are the constraints. What are the arguments for each option?” Claude generates a structured response covering angles you may not have considered. It does not make the decision for you, but it surfaces the relevant trade-offs quickly.
Improving Existing Text
Paste any text and ask Claude to rewrite it with a specific goal. Example: “Rewrite this section to be more concise and remove all passive sentences.” Or: “This paragraph is too technical for a non-finance audience. Simplify it without losing the key point.” If you want to compare Claude with ChatGPT for this type of work, read Claude vs ChatGPT for business.
Our tip: Save your best prompts in a shared document so your whole team can reuse them. A prompt that consistently produces good summaries or draft emails is worth documenting. Over time this becomes a practical prompt library specific to your type of work.
Frequently asked questions
How do I write a good prompt for Claude?
A good prompt is specific about what you want and provides the necessary context. Instead of 'summarise this', write 'summarise this report in five bullet points, focusing on the financial results and risks'. Include your role if relevant: 'I am a project manager reviewing a supplier contract'. The more context you give, the closer the output will be to what you actually need.
Can Claude read my documents?
Yes. At claude.ai you can upload PDFs, Word documents, spreadsheets, text files, and images. Claude reads the content and can answer questions, summarise, or extract specific information from it. There are limits on file size, but most standard business documents fall within those limits. Longer documents benefit from Claude's large context window, which lets it process the full text in one session.
Is Claude reliable for factual information?
Claude is reliable for reasoning about information you provide it. For external facts, it is less reliable: its training data has a cutoff date and it can be wrong about recent events or niche topics. Always verify factual claims that matter before acting on them. Claude is at its most reliable when working with documents you have uploaded, because it is reasoning about your source material rather than recalling from training data.