1-2-primo-prompt

--- title: "Your First Prompt: How to Talk to Claude" description: "Learn how to write your first message to Claude, how the chat works, and the basic tricks to get better answers right from the start." slug: "1-2-primo-prompt" enslug: "1-2-your-first-prompt" accesslevel: public status: published visible: true featured: true priority: 12 date: 2026-04-22 updated: 2026-04-22 author: "Dario Santocanale" reading_time: "6 min" prerequisites: - Active Claude.ai account (see previous tutorial) tags: [claude, prompt, beginner, chat, messages] ---

You've created your account. Now it's time to start talking to Claude. In this tutorial, you'll learn how the chat works, what you can ask, and the first tricks to get quality responses.

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The Claude.ai interface in 30 seconds

When you open Claude.ai after logging in, you'll see a clean screen with a few key areas:

The main areas:

• Left sidebar — history of past conversations. Each chat is saved automatically.
• Central area — this is where your messages and Claude's responses will appear.
• Text field at the bottom — this is where you type your prompts. Press Enter to send, Shift+Enter to add a new line.
• "New chat" (top left) — starts a fresh conversation with no memory of previous ones.

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Your first message

Click the text field at the bottom and type something. There's no magic formula for the first message: Claude understands natural language in English, Italian, and dozens of other languages.

Perfect examples to start with:

Hi! Can you introduce yourself and tell me what you can do?

Explain what artificial intelligence is as if I were 10 years old.

I need help writing a professional email to request a meeting.

Press Enter (or click the arrow icon) and wait for the response. It usually arrives in 2–5 seconds.

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What you can do in this chat

Claude can help you with virtually any text-based task. Here are the main categories:

✍️ Writing and communication

• Emails, letters, formal and informal messages
• Articles, blog posts, social media content
• Grammar and style correction
• Translation between languages

🧠 Analysis and reasoning

• Summarizing documents or long articles (paste the text)
• Comparing options with pros and cons
• Logical reasoning and problem solving
• Contract or document review (not a substitute for a lawyer!)

💻 Programming and tech

• Writing, explaining, and fixing code
• Debugging errors
• Technical explanations

📚 Learning and research

• Explanations on any topic
• Preparation for exams or interviews
• Research and information synthesis (note: data has a knowledge cutoff date)

🎨 Creativity

• Brainstorming ideas
• Stories, dialogues, scenarios
• Product or company naming

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How to get better answers: 3 basic rules

Rule 1: Be specific

Vague → generic answer Specific → useful answer

Vague prompt	Specific prompt
"Help me with an email"	"Write a professional email in English to request a meeting with a potential B2B client in the manufacturing sector"
"Tell me about SEO"	"Explain the 3 most important on-page SEO techniques for a WordPress blog, practically and without jargon"
"Translate this"	"Translate the following text from Italian to English maintaining a formal and professional tone: [text]"

Rule 2: Give context

Claude doesn't know your situation. The more context you provide, the more relevant the answer will be:

I'm a freelance web designer. I have a client who wants to add 
an e-commerce area to their existing WordPress site. The budget 
is limited ($500-800). Which plugins do you recommend and why?

Rule 3: Ask for a rewrite without hesitation

If the answer isn't exactly what you were looking for, tell Claude to adjust:

The answer is too long, can you summarize it in 3 bullet points?

Rewrite it with a more informal and direct tone.

Add practical examples for each point.

Claude remembers all the context of the conversation, so you don't need to repeat information already provided.

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The response toolbar

Under each Claude response you'll find some useful icons:

• 📋 Copy — copies the entire response to your clipboard
• 👍 / 👎 — positive/negative feedback to Anthropic (helps improve the model)
• 🔄 Regenerate — asks Claude to write a different response to the same prompt
• ✏️ Edit — edit your previous message and send a corrected version

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Things Claude won't do

It's useful to know the limits from the start:

• Doesn't browse the internet in real time (free plan). Data has a knowledge cutoff date.
• Doesn't remember past conversations (each new chat starts fresh — unless you use Projects, available with Claude Pro).
• Doesn't execute code (at least in the basic plan — it describes what the code would do).
• Doesn't generate images — for that, other tools exist (Midjourney, DALL-E, Firefly).
• Refuses harmful requests or those contrary to Anthropic's guidelines.

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Up next →How to Write Effective Prompts 8 min