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Start with your hardest problem

A two-hour session in the Claude app, with nothing to install. You leave with a
one-page statement of your reserve's most pressing problem, and a short pitch to
whoever could help solve it.

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What you'll leave with

  • A one-page statement of your reserve's most pressing problem
  • A short pitch about that problem, ready to send to whoever could help solve it
  • A table of your management plan's commitments, each with its page number
  • A list of records trapped in PDFs, spreadsheets and dashboards, for workshop 2
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How this works

Claude can read, search and draft far faster than any of us. It can't know your
place the way you do, so you decide what matters and Claude does the reading and
drafting.

Everything today uses your own place and your own documents.

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Setup check

  • Open claude.ai or the Claude desktop app
  • A Pro plan or above, for skills
  • Settings → Capabilities: code execution and file creation turned on, which
    skills need
  • Customize → Skills: skills turned on, including skill-creator, listed as
    from Anthropic. We use it in workshop 3.
  • A folder of two or three documents about your place: a management plan, a
    report, a funding letter
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What not to paste

Keep these out of Claude unless your organisation has agreed how:

  • Locations of sensitive species, such as nest and roost sites
  • Personal details of volunteers, landowners and donors
  • Survey data you haven't published and don't own outright

Check Settings → Privacy to see whether your chats help train Claude, and use
an incognito chat for anything you'd rather not keep. Team and Enterprise plans
follow their own rules.

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Basics: chats and projects

  • A chat is one conversation. Start a new chat for each new task, because
    long chats that mix several jobs get worse.
  • A project keeps your files and standing instructions together, so every
    chat in it starts knowing your place.
  • Make a project now: name it after your reserve, add your documents.
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Basics: what a skill is

A skill is a folder of written instructions Claude follows for one kind of task.

  • Claude reads each skill's short description and uses the skill when your
    request matches
  • Built-in skills make Word, Excel, PowerPoint and PDF files
  • You can add skills other people wrote, and later write your own
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Installing a skill in the app

  1. Customize → Skills
  2. Turn on the ones you want
  3. Add a skill someone shared with you as a zipped folder
    (steps: claude.com/docs/skills/how-to)

Anthropic doesn't review skills that people share. Open a shared skill's
SKILL.md and read it before you turn it on.

Today we add the grilling skill. Grilling means Claude interviews you, one
question after another, until your problem is clear.

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Exercise 1: get grilled (25 minutes)

Use the grilling skill. My reserve is ___. The problem I most need solved is ___.
Interview me until we agree what matters, what's out of scope and who decides.

Answer honestly. Say "I don't know" when you don't. It will ask a lot.

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Why grilling works

Claude can't read your mind. Until you tell it, it has no idea what you value
or who has to agree.

Each answer you give settles one decision. At the end, ask Claude to write the
problem statement from your answers, and save it in your project.

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Asking well

Tell Claude who the work is for, what it's for, and what shape you want back. Add
one example of something good if you have it.

Draft a half-page note for our volunteer council about ___. They meet monthly and
want the decision first. Here's last month's note as an example.

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Size the plan to the job

The job What to do Example
Small, easy to undo Just ask, then check Summarise this report
Fits in one sitting Grill first Draft a letter to the regulator
Spans weeks Make a map (workshop 3) Set up spill monitoring for the bay

Most jobs are small enough to check in a minute, so skip the planning for those.

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Exercise 2: a small job, then check it (15 minutes)

Summarise the key commitments in this management plan as a table, with the page
number for each one.

Then open the plan and check three rows yourself.

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Make it cite, then open the source

Ask for the source of every figure, and tell Claude to say so when the source
doesn't answer the question. Then open the source.

A first draft of one of our own case studies said "81 changed hectares". The
source said 81 one-hectare squares covering the mangroves, changed or not.
Checking took two minutes.

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Draft three, choose one

First drafts now cost almost nothing.

Write three versions of a one-paragraph ask to our council for ___. Make each
one take a different approach.

Pick one. Then say what you'd change and let it revise. You decide what gets
sent, and you tell the reader when AI helped write it.

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Exercise 3: three drafts (15 minutes)

Use your problem statement. Ask for three short pitches to whoever you'd need to
convince: a funder, a council, a landowner.

Pick the one you would send, improve it and save it.

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Use the field's own words

Claude learned from conservation literature. When you use a term from that
literature, it draws on what the literature says about it:

  • METT, management effectiveness tracking
  • adaptive management
  • 30x30, the pledge to protect 30% of land and sea by 2030
  • OECMs, other effective area-based conservation measures
  • bathing water, designated site, condition assessment

Check the definition Claude gives you. It can define an acronym wrongly and
sound sure about it.

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Before workshop 2

  • Your problem statement, saved
  • Three records trapped somewhere awkward: annual PDFs, an old spreadsheet, a
    dashboard with no download
  • Install the Claude desktop app

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Sources

  • Skills in the apps: claude.com/docs/skills/overview
  • Making and adding skills: claude.com/docs/skills/how-to
  • Grilling skill: github.com/mattpocock/skills
  • Ideas: Matt Pocock on The Pragmatic Engineer podcast
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