Most people use Claude like a search engine. That's not what it is.

Most people use Claude like a search engine. That's not what it is.

By Cynthia Schomp · Fractional CTO

Most people I talk to use Claude the way they used Google.

Type a question. Read the answer. Close the tab.

That works. It's also leaving most of the capability on the table.

Claude Is Not a Chatbot

Claude is a large language model. That's a specific technical category, and the distinction matters for what you can do with it.

A chatbot answers questions based on scripted responses or retrieved information. An LLM generates responses based on learned patterns across vast amounts of text. The generation part is the point. Claude isn't looking up the answer. It's reasoning through it, using context you give it, applying constraints you define.

That last piece is what most people miss: you can define the constraints.

What Customization Actually Means

You're not limited to the version of Claude that shows up in a chat window. You can load context, rules, and processes that shape how it thinks before it touches any work.

Anthropic calls them skills. A skill is a configuration file you write once and load before a session starts. It tells Claude your voice rules, your output formats, your banned words, your process steps. Claude reads it, applies it, and starts every session already oriented to your business.

The blank-slate version of Claude is a starting point. The configured version is your tool.

Why This Matters for an Agency

Most agency work is repetitive in structure, even when the content varies. Client briefs follow a pattern. Proposal formats don't change much. Brand voice is supposed to be consistent across every piece you write.

Claude out of the box treats every session the same. No institutional knowledge, no preferences, no memory of what you corrected last week. You start over every time.

A configured Claude carries your process into every session. That's not a feature. That's a different category of tool.

What I'm Still Figuring Out

How much to put in a skill versus leave to the conversation. My current answer: everything that should be consistent across all outputs goes in the skill. Everything specific to one task stays in the chat. The line keeps moving as I learn where it should be.

If you missed any emails in this series, the full archive is waiting: hellocyn.com/archive -- every issue, in order, yours to read whenever.

-- Cynthia Fractional CTO · Schomp.ai · The CTO's Desk

Reply to this if you're building something similar. I read every reply.