AImaxxing 101: The Full Playbook

Thanks for commenting on the reel. Here's the long version of everything I crammed into 60 seconds, plus the tools and resources I actually use in 2026. Skim it, steal what's useful, ignore the rest.

1. Use Claude as your daily driver, not ChatGPT

ChatGPT is fine for quick lookups but hallucinates and over-flatters. Claude is built around honesty and depth, which is why I run almost all my real work through it.

My stack right now:

Claude (Opus 4.7) — writing, thinking, building, research

Perplexity — anything where I need cited sources fast

ChatGPT — image generation and quick throwaway questions

Rule of thumb: if the answer matters, use Claude. If you need fresh data with sources, use Perplexity. If you just need an image, ChatGPT or Higgsfield.

2. Skills > re-prompting forever

If you find yourself typing the same instructions every day ("write in my voice", "format like this", "always do X first"), you're losing hours a week. Skills fix this.

A Skill is a folder of instructions you build once that Claude loads automatically when the task fits. Newsletter, sales emails, IG captions, hook generation, all of it.

How to build your first one (5 minutes):

Open Claude Desktop

Type "use the skill-creator skill to build a skill for [your task]"

Answer its questions

Test it on real work

The Skill Creator is pre-installed in Claude Desktop and Cowork. It interviews you, writes the skill, and even auto-tests trigger rates. Zero coding.

Skills work in Claude.ai, Claude Code, and the API with the same SKILL.md format, so you build once and run everywhere.

3. Ask 5 times, pick the best (parallel sampling)

One prompt = one shot at the answer. Five parallel prompts = five candidates you can pick from or remix.

Where this hits hardest:

Hooks for reels (run the same brief 5x, pick the strongest)

Email subject lines

Headlines for landing pages

Creative concepts

Pro move: after generating the 5, paste them all back into a fresh chat and ask Claude to rank them against criteria you define (curiosity gap, specificity, originality). The judge step is where most people leave value on the table.

4. Connect your tools with MCP (this is the big unlock for 2026)

MCP (Model Context Protocol) lets your AI actually do work in your apps. No more copy-paste between ChatGPT and Gmail and Notion.

Connectors I run inside Claude right now:

Gmail (drafts replies, searches threads, labels)

Google Calendar (creates and moves events)

Notion (reads and writes pages)

Google Drive (pulls files into context)

Fireflies (pulls meeting transcripts directly)

Stripe (revenue checks)

Figma + Canva (design generation)

Set it up: Claude Settings → Connectors → enable the ones you use. Then just say "draft a reply to the last email from [name]" and it happens.

This is the single biggest upgrade most people are sleeping on. Going from "AI that talks" to "AI that does" is the whole game in 2026.

5. Tell it to be brief (and other format controls)

Default AI output is bloated because RLHF rewards verbose answers. You have to override it.

Format commands that work:

"Be brief" / "One paragraph only"

"Skip the intro and conclusion, just the answer"

"Give me bullets, no prose"

"Answer like you're texting a friend"

"Max 3 sentences"

For longer work: flip it the other way. "Don't summarize. Give me the full version."

Either way, you're in control of length. Stop accepting the default.

6. Write custom instructions (this is where personalization lives)

Custom instructions are the closest thing to "training" Claude on you without actually fine-tuning. Mine include:

Who I am and what I do

My communication style (no em dashes, no corporate AI voice, no hedging)

What I'm working on right now

What I want it to push back on

What it should never do (no "I'd be happy to", no "great question")

The shortcut: dump a few YouTube transcripts, voice notes, or sales call transcripts into a project. Claude picks up your voice from unfiltered speech better than from polished writing. Ramble for 5 minutes into Wisprflow or any transcription tool, paste it in, done.

Set this once in Claude Settings → Preferences. Every conversation inherits it.

7. Give context. Give examples. Always.

The #1 reason AI output is generic is because the prompt is generic. Two fixes that compound:

Add context. Tell it the situation, the audience, what's been tried, what you're avoiding. The model can't read your mind. "Write me a cold email" is bad. "Write me a cold email to a $5M revenue AU SaaS founder who's already tried HubSpot and bounced off the pricing, opening with the specific objection they had" is good.

Add examples. Show 2-3 examples of what good looks like, and one example of what you don't want. Contrastive examples (good + bad) outperform good-only examples in every test I've seen. Tone tasks especially.

The format: "Here's what I want it to sound like: [example]. Here's what I don't want: [example]. Now do [task]."

Bonus: the tools I actually pay for

Not a sponsored list. Just what's on my card in 2026.

Core AI

Claude Max — daily driver

Perplexity Pro — research with citations

Higgsfield — image and video generation for content

Workflow

Claude Code — automations / literally everything else

Obsidian — second brain

Fireflies — meeting transcripts piped into Claude

Content

Wisprflow — voice-to-text for fast brain dumps into prompts

CapCut — editing

Canva — quick graphics

For builders

Claude Code — agentic coding in terminal

VS Code — IDE

Supabase + Railway — backend infra for AI apps

The meta-tip

The people getting the most out of AI right now aren't the ones with the best prompts. They're the ones who built systems: custom instructions set once, skills for repeat tasks, MCP connections so AI can act, and the habit of asking 5 times instead of 1.

The compounding is real. A skill you build today saves you 30 minutes every week forever.

Made it this far?

Follow my YT for weekly AI breakdowns and the Artemis community for the deep stuff. Drop any questions in the DMs.