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New To Claude? Do These
5 Things First, Part 3

The five settings hiding in your account that nobody turns on. Where to find each one, and the exact move that makes it worth having.

Part one made Claude know you. Part two made Claude do work. Part three is the set that most people never turn on at all, then wonder why Claude feels like a chatbot from 2022.

These five are all settings and modes that already exist inside your account. Nothing to install, nothing to pay extra for except one. Each one below gets the exact place to click and, more importantly, the exact move that makes it worth having. Knowing a setting exists is worthless. Knowing what to type into it is the whole thing.

If you have not done the first two sets yet, start with part one and part two. Everything below assumes they are done.

One: Turn On Memory, Then Go Read It

Claude writes down what it learns about you and carries it into every new chat. The part almost nobody does is open the file and read it.

Where: Settings, then turn memory on. Then find the memory itself and actually open it. It is editable text, not a black box.

The move that matters: read it like someone else wrote it about you, because something did. Fix what is wrong, delete what is stale, and add the two or three things it clearly never picked up. A wrong memory is worse than no memory, because Claude will confidently build on it for months. I found mine still thought I was working on a project I had abandoned in March.

The deeper version of this, with a layered system for context that survives across every chat, is in the Claude memory guide.

Two: Open Claude Design

You can build landing pages, slide decks, one-pagers, and marketing graphics by describing them out loud. It renders on a live canvas while you talk, so you redirect it mid-build instead of starting over.

The move that matters: import your own design system before you make anything. Give it your fonts, your exact hex codes, and your logo first. The difference between "make me a landing page" and a page that looks like it came from your brand is entirely that one step, and it takes about three minutes.

Full walkthrough with the best prompts is in the Claude Design guide.

Three: Get Familiar With Dispatch

You scan a QR code once to pair your phone with your computer. After that you text Claude a task from anywhere and it opens the apps on your actual desktop and does it. Your files never leave your machine.

Where: open Claude on desktop, find Dispatch, scan the code with your phone. Under two minutes. This one needs Pro or Max, so it is the only paid item in this set.

The move that matters: do not use it for chatting. Use it for the thing you always think of at the worst possible time. Standing in line, remembering the file you meant to pull. Text it the task, it runs on your desktop, it is finished when you sit down. The value is not the phone, it is that the work happens while you are away from the desk.

Setup and the tasks that actually work are in the Dispatch guide.

Four: Change Your Effort Level

This tells Claude how hard to think before it answers. Most people never touch it and quietly burn their limits on tasks that did not need any thinking at all.

Where: click the model name next to the send button, then pick Effort. The levels are low, medium, high, extra high, and max. High is the default, and you can change it mid-conversation.

The move that matters: treat it as a budget, not a quality dial. Drop to low for reformatting, renaming, summarizing something short, or anything where you already know the answer and just want it typed. Push to max for the handful of things a week where being wrong actually costs you: a pricing decision, a hard email, a plan you will follow for a month. Higher effort is slower and eats more of your limit, so spending it on busywork is how people hit their cap by Wednesday.

Five: Test Research Mode

Hit the plus button and pick Research. Instead of one search and one answer, Claude runs search after search, and each one decides what to look for next based on what the last one found. It goes through the web and your connected apps and comes back with something genuinely thorough.

The move that matters: give it a decision to make, not a topic to cover. "Research email platforms" gets you a comparison table you could have found yourself. "I send two campaigns a week to 4,000 people, I need automations and a visual builder, my budget is under fifty dollars a month, tell me which one to pick and what I give up by picking it" gets you an actual answer. Name your constraints and ask for a recommendation. That is the difference between a report and a decision.

The Exact Prompts

Here are all five as copy-paste moves. Do them in order and the whole set is done in an afternoon.

All Five, Copy And Paste
1. MEMORY AUDIT Paste this after turning memory on: Show me everything you currently remember about me, grouped into: my work, my preferences, my ongoing projects, and facts about people in my life. For each item, tell me where you picked it up if you know. Then flag anything you are unsure is still true, and anything that seems to contradict something else you have. Do not soften it and do not fill gaps with guesses. When you are done, ask me one question at a time about the items you flagged, and update your memory with my answers. 2. CLAUDE DESIGN, BRAND FIRST Paste this before you ask it to design anything: Before we make anything, I am setting up my brand so everything you build stays on it. My display font is [FONT] and my body font is [FONT]. My colors are [HEX] as the main, [HEX] as the background, and [HEX] for text. My brand sounds [three words, e.g. warm, direct, no fluff]. Rules: never use a font or color I did not list, never use stock-photo style imagery, and never center long paragraphs of text. Confirm you have this, then ask me what we are making first. 3. DISPATCH, THE STANDING TASK Text this to Dispatch from your phone the first time: On my desktop, open the folder [FOLDER NAME] and tell me what is actually in it. Group the files by what they are for, name anything that looks like a duplicate or an old version, and tell me the three files I most likely need this week. Do not move, rename, or delete anything. Just report back. 4. EFFORT LEVEL, THE WEEKLY SORT Paste this once and keep the answer somewhere you will see it: Here are the tasks I bring to you in a normal week: [LIST 8 TO 10 REAL TASKS]. Sort every one into LOW effort, HIGH effort, or MAX effort. Low means the answer is already decided and you are just producing it. High means real reasoning but a wrong answer is cheap to fix. Max means being wrong costs me money, time, or credibility. For each one, give me the single reason it landed in that bucket. Be strict. Most tasks belong in low and people waste their limits pretending otherwise. 5. RESEARCH MODE, THE DECISION BRIEF Use the plus button, pick Research, then paste this shape: I need to decide [THE ACTUAL DECISION]. My constraints are: budget [X], timeline [X], my technical level is [X], and it has to work with [THE TOOLS YOU ALREADY PAY FOR]. Research the real options, then give me: one recommendation, the two runners-up and exactly why they lost, what I am giving up by taking your pick, and the one thing that would change your answer if it were different. Tell me where the evidence was thin instead of writing around it.

If You Only Do One

Do the memory audit. It is the only one on this list that makes every future chat better without you doing anything else, and it is the one where people find something genuinely wrong sitting in there.