Trying to keep up with Claude lately feels like watching someone juggle while sprinting. New apps, new modes, new buttons everywhere. I opened my account last week, saw a word I didn’t recognize, googled it, and found three more words I didn’t recognize inside the explanation. Total rabbit hole.
Then I stumbled onto this brilliant cheat sheet from a sharp LinkedIn creator who decided enough was enough. The author mapped every Claude term you keep hearing into one tidy 30-item list. No jargon dumps. No assumed knowledge. Just plain language for people who want to stop nodding politely when someone says “Artifacts” or “Skills.”
I was genuinely impressed by how clean the structure is, so I’m walking you through it slowly. If you’re brand new to Claude, this is your starter pack.
1. The 3 Models
Claude is not one thing. It’s a family of three brains, and each one is good at a different job. The original poster sorts them like this:
- Opus: the smartest sibling. Use it when you need real thinking, long writing, or careful reasoning.
- Sonnet: the fast one. Great for quick edits, scanning files, and lighter tasks where you don’t need a deep thinker.
- Haiku: the cheapest and shortest. The author basically says you can forget it exists.
2. The Apps You Already Know
These are the ones most people have already poked at:
- Chat: the plain text box on claude.ai. The simplest way in.
- Cowork: Chat plus folders. The expert calls this “where you live” because it keeps your work organized.
- Claude Code: a tool for software developers. If you don’t build apps, skip it.
3. The Apps You Don’t Know Yet
This is where things get fun. The creator points out three newer ones most people miss:
- Claude Design: builds full websites without writing any code.
- Claude in Excel: lives directly inside your spreadsheet.
- Claude in Chrome: a browsing agent that actually moves around websites for you.
4. Workspaces & Memory
Now we get to the stuff that makes Claude feel personal:
- Projects: a separate workspace for each task. Think of them as labeled folders for different jobs.
- Custom Instructions: a prompt that only applies inside one specific Project.
- Memory: Claude actually remembers what you told it across different chats.
5. Outputs
Three terms to describe what Claude hands back to you:
- Artifacts: documents, code, or mini apps that show up in a side panel next to your chat.
- Markdown: simple .md files. The author calls this Claude’s favorite format because it’s clean and structured.
- CLAUDE.md: a special memory file that Claude Code reads automatically.
6. The Skills System
This part trips up almost every newcomer. Here’s the simple version from the creator:
- Skills: saved prompts you trigger with a slash command.
- SKILL.md: the file that holds the trigger word and instructions inside a Skill.
- Plugins: a bundle of Skills and Connectors built around one job.
7. Connections
How Claude reaches out into your other tools:
- Connectors: bridges between Claude and your apps like Gmail, Drive, or Calendar.
- Computer Use: Claude clicking and typing on your actual screen, like a human assistant.
- Dispatch: a phone app that lets you fire tasks from your pocket to your desktop.
8. Power Modes
Three switches that change how hard Claude works on a problem:
- Adaptive Thinking: tells Claude to think carefully before answering.
- Research: a deep web dive that produces a full report.
- Web Search: pulls live results from the internet in real time.
9. Smart Helpers
Little features that punch above their weight:
- AskUserQuestion: a clickable form Claude shows you to gather details cleanly.
- Scheduled Tasks: recurring jobs Claude runs on a timer.
- Global Instructions: a prompt Claude reads before every single task you give it.
10. The Foundations
The basics everyone should know:
- Prompt: the text you send. The author drops a great tip here: files beat prompts.
- Styles: saved tone presets so your output stops sounding like a robot.
- Vibecoding: building software by just describing what you want in plain English.
Why this map actually matters
Most beginners quit Claude not because it’s bad, but because the vocabulary feels overwhelming. Once you can name the pieces, the whole system starts to click.
I think this is the single best entry point I’ve seen for someone who wants to stop feeling lost. The mind behind it took 30 scattered concepts and turned them into a simple ladder. You climb one rung at a time.
Pick three terms from this list you didn’t know yesterday. Open Claude tonight and try them. That’s the whole onboarding plan.
Check out the full LinkedIn post for the original layout and to see how this savvy professional structured the cheat sheet visually.