Working well

How to get the result you meant, with less back and forth.

Name InDesign

You ask “What’s in this document?”, and Claude replies that it sees no document in the conversation and asks for an attachment

Your assistant does more than InDesign, so it looked for an attachment. Name InDesign, at least in your first message:

What’s in the document I have open in InDesign?

Describe the result you want

Make page 4 look better.

On page 4, stack the two photos on the margins at the full width of the type area, each caption directly under its photo. Then show me page 4.

Page 4 three times: as it was, after “Make page 4 look better”, and after the precise request, with both photos at full width
Page 4 as it was, after the first request, and after the second.

Both work. The first gets you your assistant’s idea of better. The second gets you your layout.

Ask for a plan first

You ask “Tell me what you’d change on the cover of the document I have open in InDesign. Don’t change anything yet.”, and Claude proposes three ways to deal with an empty band in the middle of the cover, and says which it prefers
The first of its proposals. The cover is untouched.

For anything big, agree on the plan first, then say “go ahead”.

One chat per job

Long chats get slow, and your assistant starts to forget how they began. A new chat costs you little: your assistant reads the document again, including what you changed by hand.

In a new chat you ask “What’s in the document I have open in InDesign?”, and Claude summarises its pages, article, captions and colophon
A new chat, and it knows the document anyway.

Only what you agreed on in the old chat is gone, so repeat any preferences in a sentence.

Something this guide doesn’t answer? Write to [email protected]. A person answers.

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