01 / The Shift

The way you work is about to change

You probably already use AI chatbots like Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini to brainstorm ideas, draft emails, or answer questions. That's a good start. But it's still you doing the work, with AI helping on small pieces.

Claude Code is different. Instead of asking AI to help with tasks, you delegate entire workflows. You describe what you want to exist, and Claude figures out the steps, executes them, and delivers the result.

Think about how you'd delegate to your sharpest team member. You wouldn't dictate every click and keystroke. You'd say: "I need a summary of this customer feedback by end of day" and trust them to figure it out. Same energy here. You're becoming a manager of AI agents.

What this actually looks like

Say you just downloaded some customer feedback data. Instead of manually creating folders, moving files, writing analysis, and building a report, you say:

You say

Create a project folder on my Desktop, move the customer feedback CSV there, analyze the sentiment patterns, and build me a dashboard I can share with the team.

Claude then autonomously:

Creates the folder structure
Moves your downloaded file
Reads and analyzes the data
Builds a complete, styled dashboard
Opens it in your browser for review

One request. Five actions. No manual steps in between.

Why this matters

This changes what's possible in a workday. The bottleneck shifts from "how do I do this?" to "what should be done?"

Once you start thinking this way, you see opportunities everywhere. That weekly report you compile manually? That data you export, clean, and format? Those repetitive multi-step processes? All candidates for delegation.

What we'll do today

In about 30 minutes, you'll experience this firsthand. You'll delegate a complete workflow to Claude and start thinking about what else you can hand off.

02 / Understanding the Terminal

What is a terminal?

Before we dive in, let's demystify something that might sound intimidating: the terminal. It's simpler than it sounds.

A terminal is like a backstage pass to your computer. Instead of clicking through menus and windows, you're talking directly to your computer. It's the difference between ordering at a fast food counter (clicking menus) versus calling the chef directly (terminal). You can ask for exactly what you want.

Why does Claude Code need a terminal?

Claude Code runs in the terminal because that's where it can actually do things on your computer: create folders, move files, build dashboards, run analyses. The web version of Claude can only answer questions. The terminal version can take action.

The good news? You won't use the terminal directly. There's a friendlier option.

Enter Conductor

Conductor is a Mac app that wraps Claude Code in a beautiful, easy-to-use interface. It handles all the terminal stuff behind the scenes so you never have to.

What Conductor gives you

Chat interface - Type your request like you're texting, no commands to memorize
Change viewer - See exactly what Claude modified (additions in green, removals in red)
Accept/Reject buttons - Click to approve or decline changes
Multiple workspaces - Work on several tasks at once, each isolated

Think of Conductor as a friendly translator. You speak plain English, Conductor handles the technical translation, and Claude does the work.

03 / Getting Set Up

Setting up Conductor

Conductor handles everything for you - installation, login, and workspace management. Let's get you started.

Need help?

If you get stuck during setup, reach out to Austin Reece, Nate Larkin, or Steve West. They'll get you running quickly.

Before you start: GitHub account

You'll need a GitHub account to use Conductor. GitHub is where your project files are stored and backed up.

Create GitHub account

Already have GitHub?

Skip this step. If you don't have an account yet, use your Gladly email address when signing up.

Step 1: Download Conductor

Download from conductor.build

Click the button above, then click the download button on their website

Move to Applications - open your Downloads folder, then drag the Conductor app icon into your Applications folder

Launch Conductor from your Applications folder

Step 2: Sign in with GitHub

The first time you launch Conductor, it will ask you to sign in with GitHub.

What is GitHub?

Think of GitHub as a secure cloud backup for your work. It saves every version of your files so you can always go back if something goes wrong. It's free, and used by millions of people to store and share their projects. When Conductor connects to GitHub, it automatically backs up everything you create.

Welcome to Conductor

Click the button to connect your GitHub account

Click "Sign in with GitHub"

A browser window opens - sign in with your GitHub account (or create one if you don't have it yet)

Authorize Conductor to access your GitHub - this is safe and lets it create project folders for you

Step 3: Set up agents

Next, Conductor asks which AI agent to use. You'll see this screen:

Set up agents

Conductor uses your local authentication. Billing goes through your Anthropic or OpenAI account.

✦Claude Code

Anthropic's flagship coding agent. Our daily driver, great for interactive programming.

◉Claude login detected

Codex

OpenAI's coding agent. Powerful, precise, and built for long running tasks.

◉Codex login detected

Continue →

Click on Claude Code, then Continue

Click "Claude Code" to select it (not Codex)

Click "Continue" to proceed

If prompted, sign in with your Anthropic account (the one with your Claude Pro/Max subscription)

Which account?

Use your Anthropic account - the same one you use to log in at claude.ai. This is the account with your Claude Pro or Max subscription.

Step 4: Add a repository (Quick start)

Next, you'll see the "Add a repository" screen. Choose Quick start - this creates a new project folder for you automatically and connects it to GitHub.

Add a repository

↗

Quick start

Create a repo for me

📁 Open local repo

🔗 Clone from URL

Click "Quick start" - this is the easiest way to get started

Click "Quick start"

Give your project a name (like "claude-practice" or "my-first-project")

✅

Checkpoint: You should see Conductor's interface with a chat panel where you can talk to Claude. Your project folder has been created automatically. You're ready for the exercises!

Understanding the Conductor interface

Here's what you'll see:

Chat panel - Type your requests to Claude here, just like texting
File viewer - See the files Claude creates or modifies
Change viewer - Review what Claude changed (additions shown in green, removals in red) before accepting
Workspaces sidebar - Switch between different projects

Understanding permissions

When Claude wants to take an action (like creating a file), it will pause and ask for permission. You'll see:

What Claude wants to do - A description of the action
Accept button - Click to approve and let Claude proceed
Reject button - Click to decline and tell Claude to try something else

Safe to approve

For file operations during this training (creating folders, moving files, editing documents), it's safe to click Accept. Claude only works within your workspace and always shows you what it's about to do.

Managing workspaces

Each workspace is a separate environment for a project. Good practices:

One workspace per project - Keep work organized and context clean
Switch workspaces - Click on a different workspace in the sidebar to switch
Files stay local - Workspaces are linked to folders on your computer

04 / Claude vs Claude Code

What's the difference?

There are actually three ways to use Claude. Understanding the difference will help you pick the right tool for each task.

	Claude Web	Claude Desktop	Claude Code
Where	claude.ai in browser	Desktop app	Terminal (Conductor)
What it does	Answers questions, writes text	Answers questions + creates artifacts	Actually DOES things on your computer
Best for	Quick questions, drafting	Visual help, creating documents	Building, automating, analyzing data

Claude Web = Texting a smart friend for advice

Claude Desktop = That friend sitting next to you, creating documents and visuals as you talk

Claude Code = Having that friend sit at your computer and do the work for you

Why are we using Claude Code?

For this training, we want Claude to actually take action:

Create folders and move files
Build dashboards and reports
Analyze data and generate insights
Automate multi-step workflows

Claude Web can only give you advice. Claude Code can do the work.

When to use each

Quick question or drafting text?

Use Claude Web or Claude Desktop - they're faster for simple back-and-forth.

Everything else?

Use Claude Code. If it involves files, data, building, or doing - Claude Code is the answer.

What becomes possible

Here's what people are actually doing with Claude Code. This isn't science fiction - these are real workflows happening today:

In minutes, not days

Build a complete internal tool - "Create a dashboard that pulls our support metrics and shows trends" → working app in 30 minutes
Analyze an entire quarter's data - "Read all 500 customer feedback responses and identify the top 10 themes with supporting quotes" → comprehensive report in 10 minutes
Create a presentation from scratch - "Turn this strategy document into a 15-slide executive presentation with charts" → done before your coffee gets cold

Automations that run themselves

Weekly report automation - "Every Monday, pull data from these 3 sources, generate insights, and email the summary to leadership"
Document processing pipelines - "When a new contract comes in, extract key terms, flag risks, and add to our tracking spreadsheet"
Multi-step workflows - "Monitor our competitor's pricing page, compare to ours, and alert me when they change"

Research at scale

Competitive analysis - "Analyze these 20 competitor websites and create a feature comparison matrix"
Knowledge synthesis - "Read all our internal documentation and create a searchable FAQ for the team"
Trend identification - "Go through 2 years of customer tickets and identify which issues are getting worse vs. better"

Custom tools built for you

Personal productivity apps - "Build me a tool that tracks my meeting notes, extracts action items, and reminds me of follow-ups"
Team utilities - "Create an app where anyone can upload a CSV and get an instant visualization"
Integration bridges - "Connect our help desk data to our CRM and keep them in sync"

The question isn't "Can Claude Code do this?" - it's "What would I build if building was free?" Because now, for most things, it basically is.

05 / Your First Delegation

Your first conversation with Claude

Your project folder was created by Quickstart. Now let's have your first conversation with Claude and give it some files to work with.

Exercise 1: Say hello

In Conductor's chat panel, type a simple message to Claude:

Say this to Claude

Hi Claude! What can you help me with in this project?

Claude will respond and explain what it can do. This confirms everything is working correctly.

✅

Checkpoint: You should see Claude respond in the chat. If it asks about permissions, click Accept.

About permissions

Claude asks before creating or modifying files. For file operations, it's safe to click Accept - Claude won't do anything destructive without asking first.

How to reference files

In the next exercise, you'll tell Claude about a file. There are several ways to do this:

Natural language "the file I just downloaded" - Claude will figure it out @filename Type @ then start typing a filename - Conductor shows suggestions as you type Drag & drop Drag a file from Finder into Conductor's chat panel

Exercise 2: Download and move the sample data

Step 1: Download the sample customer feedback data (a CSV file - that's just a spreadsheet format that most data tools can read):

Step 2: Tell Claude to move it to your project folder:

Say this to Claude

Find the customer_feedback.csv file I just downloaded and move it into this project folder

✅

Checkpoint: Look in Conductor's file viewer on the left - you should see customer_feedback.csv appear in your project.

Notice what just happened: you described what you wanted, not how to do it. You didn't memorize any commands. You just said "move the file" and Claude figured out the rest.

06 / Building Something Real

From data to dashboard

Now let's put Claude to work. You'll go from raw data to a polished dashboard in just a few prompts.

Exercise 3: Analyze the data

Let's start by understanding what's in the data:

Say this to Claude

What's the sentiment breakdown in this customer feedback? Show me the percentages.

Claude will read the CSV, analyze the sentiment column, and give you a breakdown.

✅

Checkpoint: You should see percentages for positive, negative, and neutral sentiment in Claude's response.

Exercise 4: Build an executive report

Now let's create something shareable:

Say this to Claude

Create a summary report of this customer feedback that I could share with my executive team. Include key metrics, top issues, and recommendations. Save it as a markdown file.

What's a markdown file?

Markdown (.md) is a simple text format that makes documents easy to read and share. It uses symbols like # for headings and * for bullets. Most tools can read it, and it pastes cleanly into Google Docs, Notion, and Slack.

✅

Checkpoint: Find the .md file in your project folder (look in Conductor's file viewer). Right-click, choose "Open With", then select "TextEdit" to see the formatted report.

Pro tip: Markdown in Google Docs

To paste markdown cleanly into Google Docs: go to Tools → Preferences → Enable Markdown. Then copy/paste and formatting is preserved.

Exercise 5: Build an interactive dashboard

This is where it gets exciting. Ask Claude to build you a visual dashboard:

Say this to Claude

Build me an interactive HTML dashboard showing the sentiment breakdown, top issues by category, and channel breakdown. Make it look professional, save it as dashboard.html, and open it in my browser.

Watch Claude work. It will analyze the data, write the code needed to display it, save the file, and open it in your browser. All from one request.

✅

Checkpoint: A dashboard should open in Chrome with charts and visualizations. This is the "wow" moment.

Exercise 6: Apply brand guidelines

The dashboard looks good, but let's make it match Gladly's brand. First, download the brand guidelines:

Move the brand guidelines file to your project folder (or just drag it into Conductor). Then tell Claude to use it:

Say this to Claude

Update the dashboard to match Gladly's brand. Use the gladly-brand.md file I just downloaded for the colors and styling guidelines.

Reference the file

You can also type @gladly-brand.md in your message to directly reference the file. Claude will read it and apply the styles.

✅

Checkpoint: Refresh your browser. The dashboard should now have Gladly's green color scheme.

One request. Full analysis, dashboard creation, and delivery. You didn't write any code, create any HTML, or design anything manually. You described the outcome, and Claude made it happen.

07 / Planning Mode & Control

You're the director

Claude works autonomously, but you're always in control. You approve actions, redirect when needed, and can have Claude think before acting on complex tasks.

Understanding modes

Claude has three modes, and you can switch between them:

Normal mode (default)

Claude asks permission before creating or modifying files. This is what we've been using.

Auto-Accept mode

Claude executes without asking. Use this for trusted workflows where you don't need to review each step.

Plan mode

Claude analyzes and proposes a plan without taking action. Great for complex tasks where you want to review the approach first.

In Conductor, you can simply tell Claude how you want it to work. Just say "plan this first" or "think through this before acting" in your request.

Exercise 7: Plan before building

For complex tasks, it's smart to have Claude plan before taking action. Let's extend the dashboard we built with a new feature.

Ask Claude to plan an enhancement to your dashboard:

Say this to Claude

Before you make any changes, plan this out first: I want to add a new section to my dashboard that shows the top 3 issues customers are complaining about, with specific quotes from the feedback. What's your approach?

When you ask Claude to plan first, it will:

Analyze the data to understand what's available
Ask clarifying questions if needed
Propose a detailed plan before making changes
Wait for your approval before doing anything

Review the plan, then tell Claude to proceed (or ask for changes first)

✅

Checkpoint: Your dashboard should now have a new section showing top customer issues with quotes. Refresh your browser to see the update.

Why ask Claude to plan first?

Better output quality - Claude has more context about what you actually want.

Fewer surprises - You review the approach before any work begins.

Complex tasks - When there are many ways to solve something, planning helps you pick the right approach.

Staying in control

If Claude is doing something you don't want:

Stop button Click to stop Claude immediately. It pauses and waits for your next instruction. Reject changes Don't accept proposed changes. Tell Claude what to do differently.

Iterating on results

The first version is a draft. Refine it through conversation:

You: This is good, but use Gladly Green (#009B00) for the accent color

You: Add a section showing how sentiment has changed over time

You: Make the summary section more prominent, that's what leadership will look at first

Each refinement builds on the last. You're shaping the output through direction, not doing the work yourself.

Managing Claude's memory

Claude remembers your entire conversation, which is great for building on previous work. But for unrelated tasks, start fresh:

/clear Type this in the chat to clear the conversation and start fresh. Use it between unrelated tasks.

When to use /clear

If Claude seems confused or is referencing old information that's no longer relevant, use /clear. It's better to start clean than to have Claude working with stale context.

When things go wrong

Claude isn't perfect. Here's what to do when things don't work:

Claude made a mistake

Just tell it: "That's not what I wanted. Instead, do X." Claude learns from your feedback and will adjust.

Claude can't find a file

Make sure you're in the right workspace. Try dragging the file into the chat, or use the full file path.

Claude seems confused

Use /clear to start fresh. Then re-explain what you're trying to do from the beginning.

Something broke

You can always reject changes and ask Claude to try a different approach. If a file was modified incorrectly, ask Claude to undo the change.

Best practices

Review before accepting - Always look at what Claude changed before clicking Accept
Be specific - The more detail you give, the better the results
Start small - Test on sample data before running on important files
Back up important files - Before letting Claude modify critical data, make a copy first

08 / Quick Reference

Commands & shortcuts

Bookmark this page. You'll want to reference these as you work.

Conductor basics

Chat panel Type your request and press Enter to send Accept / Reject Approve or decline Claude's proposed changes Stop button Cancel Claude's current task

Controlling Claude

Stop Click to stop Claude immediately "Plan first" Include this in your request to have Claude plan before acting "Wait for approval" Tell Claude to pause and check with you before major actions

Session management

Type these commands directly in Conductor's chat panel:

/clear Fresh start. Clears conversation history. Use between unrelated tasks. /help See available commands and get help.

File references

@filename Point Claude to a specific file. Example: @data.csv @folder/ Reference an entire folder Drag & drop Drag files into Conductor to get their full path

Working styles

Default Claude shows proposed changes for your approval "Plan first" Say this to have Claude think through approach before doing anything "Step by step" Ask Claude to pause between major steps for your review

Claude's memory is a conversation window. When starting something new and unrelated, /clear gives you a fresh canvas. Don't worry about clearing too often - it's better to start clean than to have Claude confused by old context.

09 / What's Possible

Start seeing workflows

Now that you've experienced autonomous execution, the question becomes: what else in your work can you hand off?

Basic (What we just did)

Organize files - Create folders, move and rename files
Analyze spreadsheets - Find patterns, calculate metrics, identify trends
Create reports - Executive summaries, markdown documents
Build dashboards - Interactive HTML visualizations
Clean messy data - Standardize formats, remove duplicates, fix errors

Intermediate

Automate weekly reports - Same analysis, different data, every Monday
Build custom tools - Small utilities specific to your workflow
Create presentations - From data to slides
Compare documents - Reconcile invoices, find discrepancies
Batch operations - Process hundreds of files the same way

Advanced

Build web applications - Internal tools, dashboards, portals
Create AI-powered automations - Agents that work while you sleep
Develop integrations - Connect systems via APIs
Build prototypes - Test ideas quickly before committing resources

Examples by role

Marketing

"Pull last week's campaign metrics from this spreadsheet, compare to the previous week, identify what's working and what's not, and draft a summary I can share in standup."

Customer Success

"Analyze the last 30 days of support tickets, categorize the top issues by product area, and create a report showing trends and recommended focus areas for the product team."

Operations

"Take this month's vendor invoices, compare them to our contracts, flag any discrepancies, and create a summary spreadsheet with action items."

Leadership

"Gather data from these three reports, synthesize the key metrics, and create an executive summary I can present to the board."

The automation lens

Start noticing repetitive patterns in your week:

What do you do every Monday that takes an hour?
What data do you export, clean, and reformat regularly?
What reports do you compile from multiple sources?
What information do you look up and summarize repeatedly?

Each of these is a candidate for delegation.

You're not learning a tool. You're developing a new capability: the ability to describe outcomes and have them executed. This compounds. The more you delegate, the more capacity you have to think about what else to delegate.

Your next step

Before you close this page, think of one workflow you do regularly that could be delegated. Write it down. Then try it with Claude.

Need help?

Questions? Stuck on something? Want to brainstorm automation ideas? Reach out to Austin Reece, Nate Larkin, or Steve West.

Resources

Claude Code Docs Best Practices Conductor App

Your Achievements

First Delegation

Data Analyst

Dashboard Builder

Graduate

The way you work just changed.
Now go automate something.