J. RABATIN // CLAUDE OPSFIELD MANUAL · GUIDE
Claude Code · Educational Series

5 Claude Code tips that feel illegal to know

Five small moves that separate people who fight Claude from people who fly with it. No coding background needed — you can use all five today.

Reference Guidewith a downloadable resource for your Claude Code sandbox

What's inside

  1. Give Claude a memory (CLAUDE.md)
  2. Turn a good chat into a skill
  3. Debug with a screenshot
  4. Plug in your tools with MCP
Tip 01

Give Claude a memory (CLAUDE.md)

Drop a CLAUDE.md file in your project and Claude reads it every session — your tone, your rules, your do-not-touch list. You stop re-explaining yourself in every chat.

Treat it like onboarding docs for a new hire: short, specific, and about how YOU like things done.

Why it worksPersistent context beats a perfect one-off prompt. Write it once; it pays out forever.
Tip 02

Turn a good chat into a skill

When a chat nails a process, save it as a skill and run it by name later. Your best work becomes a reusable tool instead of a one-time win.

Do thisNext time a chat works great, ask: should this be a skill? Usually yes.
Tip 03

Debug with a screenshot

Paste a screenshot of the error instead of typing it out. Claude reads images — the stack trace, the red squiggle, the broken layout — and goes straight to the fix.

FasterShow, don't transcribe. It sees what you see.
Tip 04

Plug in your tools with MCP

Connect an MCP server and Claude can act inside your real apps — read a ticket, post a message, pull a doc — across tools in one request. You stop being the copy-paste bridge.

Add only what you use, and review the access each connector asks for.

SafetyPrefer read-only unless a task truly needs write access.
Free Download

The 5-tips cheat sheet

A one-pager with all five tips and the exact commands, ready to pin by your desk.

CLAUDE.md template
Chat→skill steps
Screenshot debugging
MCP setup
Verify-loop pattern
Commands
Beginner notes
Common mistakes
When to use each
Checklist
✓ Downloaded. Drop it in your skills/ folder and try it in your Claude Code sandbox.