🛋️ AI Setup For People Who Hate Setting Things Up

Most setup guides are written by people who enjoy setting things up. You can tell. They say things like “take a moment to explore the preferences pane” as if that’s a treat.

This guide is for the rest of us - the people with a drawer full of cables, a smart TV still showing the setup wizard, and a strong suspicion that “just configure it” is how they get you. I have ADHD; I know the exact shape of the wall you hit when a tool demands admin before it gives you anything back. So here’s my promise: three steps, about ten minutes, and the biggest one is copy-and-paste. After that you’re allowed to stop, guilt-free, forever.

I call it the Bare Minimum Three. Not “quick start”. Not “essentials”. The bare minimum - the least you can do and still end up with an AI that knows you.

Step 1: Get through the door (2 minutes)

What it is: an account. That’s genuinely all.

How to do it: go to claude.ai, sign up with your email or Google account. Done. You do not need the desktop app today. You do not need the phone app today. You do not need to compare plans, watch a tutorial, or read a single review. The free plan is real and it’s plenty.

The bit nobody tells you: skipping the optional stuff isn’t cutting corners, it’s good sequencing. Apps and add-ons are worth having after the tool has proven itself useful, because by then you’ll actually want them. Downloading four things before you’ve typed one sentence is how setup fatigue wins. Door open, move on.

Step 2: Make it set itself up (5 minutes)

What it is: the whole trick of this guide. Instead of you filling in settings forms, Claude interviews you - and then writes its own setup notes.

How to do it: open a new chat, paste this in, press enter, and answer the questions like a tired person. Short answers are fine. One-word answers are fine.

Nick this one:

You're going to set yourself up for me, because I hate setting things up.

Interview me first: ask me short questions, strictly one at a time, six questions maximum. Find out roughly who I am, what fills my days, the tasks I put off most, how I like things explained (short vs detailed, formal vs relaxed), and anything else you need to be genuinely useful to me. Accept lazy answers without fuss.

When the interview's done:
1. Write a short "working with me" note based only on my answers - don't pad it with details I didn't give you - and remember it for all our future chats.
2. List the three jobs you could realistically take off my plate this week, based on what I told you.
3. Give me one small thing to try today that takes under five minutes.

(This works in ChatGPT too, if that’s where you’ve ended up - but the remembering part is the reason I’d do it in Claude.)

Say you’re a self-employed plasterer. Your six answers might be, in full: “Dave”, “plastering, quoting, chasing invoices”, “paperwork”, “short”, “invoices deffo”, “no”. That’s enough. From those six scraps Claude will draft a working profile of you, save it, and hand you a to-do list of things it can take over - probably starting with the invoice chasing, Dave. Or say you’re a parent back at work after mat leave: “Ash”, “part-time payroll, two under five”, “meal planning and the nursery emails”, “short and friendly”, “the emails”, “not really” gets you an assistant that already knows Thursday is chaos. Lazy answers work because Claude’s filling the gaps, which was the whole arrangement.

The bit nobody tells you: this prompt quietly does the job that the settings screens exist for. The Profile page, the “how should Claude respond” box - the interview gathers all of it conversationally, and the “remember it” line files it away. You’ve done proper setup while feeling like you had a chat. That’s not cheating. That’s the tool working for you, which was always the deal.

Step 3: Flip the two switches (3 minutes)

What it is: the one visit to Settings you can’t delegate, because Claude can’t flip its own toggles.

How to do it: click your initials, open Settings → Capabilities, and check that memory and “search and reference chats” are both on. They often are already, in which case your step 2 notes are already saved and you can close the settings and never return. While you’re in there, glance at Settings → Privacy and set the “help improve Claude” toggle whichever way lets you sleep - either is fine, just make it your choice. If a toggle isn’t exactly where I said, don’t spiral: menus move around occasionally, poke about, it’ll be nearby.

The bit nobody tells you: memory is the switch that makes step 2 permanent instead of a one-off. Without it, that lovely “working with me” note evaporates when the chat ends, and next week you’re a stranger again. With it, every future conversation starts warm. Three minutes here is what stops your ten minutes going to waste.

That’s it. No, really.

Here’s what you now have: an account, an assistant that knows who you are and what you hate doing, a shortlist of jobs it’s offered to take over, and settings that make all of it stick. People pay for courses to end up roughly here.

Everything else - the desktop app, voice mode, Styles, Projects - is genuinely optional, and the defaults are good. My honest advice is to add precisely nothing until the day you feel a gap. “I wish it opened faster” is the day you get the desktop app. “I wish I could talk instead of type” is the day you get the phone app. Let the wishes arrive first.

The small print

• Ten minutes of setup won’t make you good at asking. That skill comes from use - from bringing it real emails, real letters, real Tuesday problems and haggling over the results. Setup lays the table; it doesn’t cook.
• The interview only knows what you told it. Six lazy answers produce a decent sketch, not a portrait. It’ll get sharper every week as you use it - you don’t need to go back and do it “properly”.
• This isn’t secretly the full setup. There are real settings I’ve skipped on purpose because they’re not day-one material. You’re at 80%, and 80% today beats 100% never.

The one move

Paste the step 2 prompt. Skip the door formalities you’ve probably half-done anyway, skip the toggles, just have the interview. This guide exists so that one copy-and-paste could happen. If Claude having amnesia about you next week is the price of actually starting today… pay it. You can flip the switches any time.

When you’ve got more energy (or a spare half hour and a cuppa), Your First 30 Minutes With Claude AI is the fuller version of this - and the complete guided setup, playbook and all, lives in The Claude Kickstart (coming soon).