A browser tab is Claude's front door. Claude Code is where the real leverage is: reusable skills, plugins, connectors to your actual apps, and tasks that run on a schedule while you sleep. Here is the whole ladder, in the order I would do it over a weekend.
the setupSame Claude, way more it can do. It runs in your terminal, but you never write code, you talk and it does the work. Install it from claude.com/claude-code (there are one-click desktop installers for Mac and Windows), or on Mac/Linux paste this one line into your terminal:
curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bashThere is no single "right mode," just the right surface for the job:
If you type the same setup ten times a week, save it once. In Claude Code you can save a reusable prompt and trigger it by name, like /script or /email (these are now part of Skills, see step 5). On a Mac you can do the same thing anywhere with System Settings, then Keyboard, then Text Replacement: type a few letters and your full prompt appears.
Set Claude up as a routine and it runs on a schedule on Anthropic's cloud, even with your laptop closed. Wake up to a morning brief with your content numbers and your to-dos, set once, runs on repeat.
/schedule
# then describe the task and pick daily / weekly, e.g.
# "Every morning at 7am, summarise yesterday's post performance and my top 3 to-dos."A skill is a tiny SKILL.md file that teaches Claude one thing your way: your writing voice, your carousel format, your onboarding. Claude loads it on its own when your request matches. Start with a brand-voice skill, it is what stops your AI from sounding like everyone else's.
Claude Code has a plugin marketplace (an official one curated by Anthropic, plus a community one). Install a plugin with /plugin. Pick the one that matches what you do every week. One you actually use beats fifty you don't.
An MCP is a connector that lets Claude reach into the apps you already live in. Add one with a single command:
claude mcp addReal, current connectors include Notion, Gmail, Slack, Stripe, Google Drive, and even GoHighLevel. Now you can say "pull last week's numbers and drop them in my wins channel" and it just happens, no copy-pasting between tabs.
Drop these into your Claude Code project and they do more than 50 one-off prompts:
CLAUDE.md: who you are, what you do, who you sell to, what matters this week. Claude reads it at the start of every session, so you never re-explain yourself.Give each project, client, or teammate its own folder with its own CLAUDE.md. Share the folder through version control (git) and anyone who opens it loads the same rules and context you do, so a VA or teammate gets consistent results without re-training. (Same rules and context, not literally identical outputs, since models are not deterministic.)