The goal of this lesson: get fluent with Claude in plain conversation, and learn where it is strong versus where it makes things up.

Three words to define upfront:

• A prompt is the instruction you type.
• A token is the unit Claude reads and writes in — roughly three-quarters of a word.
• The context window is how much text Claude can hold in one conversation.

Where chat pays off first, ranked by universal value:

• Draft and edit writing — emails, resumes, reports, essays. The best first win for almost everyone.
• Learn and explain — turn a dense topic into plain English, get analogies, quiz yourself.
• Research with sources — turn on web search for current info, or Research mode for a deeper cited report.
• Summarize documents — upload a PDF, get a summary aimed at a specific reader.
• Brainstorm and translate.

One tool note: switch models by task — Opus for hard reasoning, Haiku for fast bulk cleanup, Sonnet in between. Use extended thinking for multi-step logic.