Most people open Claude, type one question, grab the answer, and close the tab. That’s it. But there’s a whole other way to use it, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
I just watched a breakdown from Dan Martell, a founder who says he’s logged over 1,000 hours inside Claude across every business he runs. The creator lays out six levels of Claude users, from the casual amateur all the way to someone who builds self-running systems. I was genuinely surprised how much room there is to grow between “I chat with it sometimes” and “it runs a department for me.” Here’s the climb, broken down.
The old way vs the new way
The amateur treats Claude like a fancy search box. One question, one answer, no memory, no context. As the original poster puts it, that’s like owning a NASA supercomputer and using it to calculate 2 + 2.
The new way flips that. Instead of asking and closing, you give Claude memory, context, tools, and eventually let it do the work while you just review. Same tool, completely different relationship.
Let’s walk the levels.
The six levels, explained
Level 1: The Amateur. Treats Claude like Google. The creator shares two quick upgrades that cost nothing:
- Make Claude interview you first. Tell it, “Before you answer, ask me any questions you need to do this properly.” It pulls the context out of you instead of guessing.
- Make it check its own work. Just type “check your work” and watch it catch mistakes you’d never spot.
Level 2: The Regular. Here Claude becomes a workspace, not a chat. The expert leans on Projects, one per role, client, or workflow, so Claude remembers who you are every time. His setup steps:
- Create a new project and name it your role (like “Marketing”).
- Build a master prompt. Tell Claude, “Interview me to build a master prompt for my role,” answer its questions, and you get a file describing how you work, your team, your tools.
- Drop that master prompt plus your real documents, samples, and processes into the project files.
He describes the master prompt as your ingredients (everything about you) and a system prompt as the recipe (the steps). His tip: have Claude interview you to write the system prompt for a specific workflow, then paste it into the project’s custom instructions. Same quality, same format, every single time.
Level 3: The Integrator. Now Claude plugs into where work actually lives: Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Slack, Notion. The industry pro says it kills the copy-paste shuffle. Why paste an email in when you can just tell Claude to go grab it? His moves:
- Connect your tools through connectors so Claude can search them mid-chat.
- Build visualizations like graphs and mockups right inside the conversation.
- Build interactive artifacts, little clickable mini-apps with buttons and sliders.
A quieter trick he mentions: paste text and ask Claude to drop it into Composer, a doc-like space inside chat, so you can edit until it’s exactly right. He also runs Claude in Chrome to have it do browser work for him.
Level 4: The Operator. This is where you stop being the doer and become the director, what he calls the “human in the loop.” Three ways to deploy it:
- System prompts for any repeatable output.
- Skills. His rule: if he does something more than three times a week, he turns it into a skill, like a “/company status” command that summarizes his metrics on demand.
- Scheduled co-work tasks that take over your computer and run jobs while you’re at dinner.
His favorite power move here is chaining skills, where a copywriting skill feeds an email skill, which feeds an inbox-automation skill. Small packaged agents linking into one pipeline.
Level 5: The Builder. Now Claude ships actual software through Claude Code. The contributor says people at this level are in roughly 0.04% of users. He splits building into loops (always-running server jobs), tools (disposable one-offs), and apps (real production software). His example: his house manager, not a programmer, built a full system to run their cars, real estate, and budgets. As he says, English is the new programming language. Big tip: always use plan mode first so Claude writes a full plan before touching code, which saves serious money.
Level 6: The Agent Orchestrator. The top floor. You build one main agent that directs specialized sub-agents, each owning a workflow. The mind behind it calls his main agent “Kai,” a CEO agent that checks in with other agents and reports to him through Telegram. Now you’re the “human on the loop,” not in it. He even runs a critique agent that reviews other agents’ output before it reaches him.
Why this matters
Here’s what hit me. Most folks just collect features and brag, “oh, I use that one,” without building a single habit. The real shift isn’t learning more tricks. It’s moving from doing the work to directing it.
The creator’s closing challenge is simple and smart: pick one feature from any level and commit to using it 30 days straight. Maybe the Chrome extension. Maybe building your first skill. One thing, repeated, until it sticks.
The full video walks through each level with on-screen demos, so if you want to see exactly how he sets up projects, skills, and agents, it’s worth watching the whole thing. Then go pick your one feature and start the 30 days.