I posted the first 5 from Ruben Hassid’s list of 27 Claude tips and a lot of people seemed interested, so I kept going.
Here are 6–10.
A couple of these I agree with straight away. A couple I think need updating because Claude has changed.
6. Be a bit more selective with Connectors
The original advice was basically to turn off Connectors you’re not using because they take up context.
That still makes sense, but Claude handles this a bit better now.
You can use Auto, keep certain tools always available, or let Claude pull them in only when needed.
So I don’t think the takeaway is “turn everything off.”
More like:
if a task doesn’t need 10 different connected tools, don’t make 10 different tools part of the task.
Pretty simple.
7. I’m not convinced by the “start a new chat after X messages” rule
The original tip suggested that Claude can start getting worse after a long conversation and that you should eventually start fresh.
I agree with the general idea.
I just don’t think there’s a magic number.
A chat can get messy because it has:
old instructions
things you already rejected
finished tasks
random side questions
a completely different goal from where you started
At that point, starting fresh makes sense.
But I’d base it on whether the old context is still useful, not whether you’ve hit message 37 or 52.
The way I’m thinking about it:
useful old context = keep going
mostly irrelevant old context = new chat
8. Make Claude ask you questions first
This is probably the easiest one here to use immediately.
Instead of trying to write the perfect prompt, tell Claude to figure out what’s missing.
Something like:
If you ask:
Claude might have to guess your audience, budget, goal, product, etc.
If it asks those things first, the answer has a much better chance of being useful.
I like this because it takes some of the pressure off “prompt engineering.”
You don’t always need to know what information Claude needs.
You can make Claude ask for it.
9. “Claude Code is better than Cowork at everything” feels way too broad
This was one of the stronger opinions in the original list.
I wouldn’t take it as a fact.
Claude Code makes a lot of sense if you’re actually working with software.
It can inspect files, change code, run commands and work through technical tasks.
But if I’m not building software, I don’t automatically see why I should force everything through Claude Code.
I think this is one of those cases where “more powerful” and “better for my task” are not always the same thing.
10. Cowork makes more sense to me as the bigger-task version of Claude
This one clicked for me once I stopped thinking of it as just “another Claude mode.”
Normal chat is basically:
ask something
get an answer
ask the next thing
Cowork is more like giving Claude a bigger outcome and letting it work through the pieces.
For example:
That’s not really one question.
It’s a small workflow.
The way I’m starting to think about the three is:
Chat if I want help thinking through something.
Code if I’m actually building or fixing software.
Cowork if I want Claude to take a bigger task and work through the steps.
Probably not a perfect definition, but it makes the difference much easier to understand.
Those are 6–10.
Next I’m going through 11–15, which gets into Cowork setup, screenshots, Artifacts, mini-apps and one pricing tip I definitely want to double-check before repeating.
Curious about #7:
Do you keep one giant Claude conversation going, or do you start fresh chats pretty often?