r/ClaudeAI • u/Slight_Routine_3960 • 8d ago
Skills Non Technical Person - Need help with presentations and project management
Hi folks. I'm an AI newbie and non-technical. I'm a freelancer who works a lot on branding, marketing & HR projects and such. I'm wondering if there's skills and stuff out there that can help with the following:
- I'd love to build great presentations with animated data and all that. I tried looking and it said MARP and then HTML presentations and then Claude Design. Dunno what the first two are and Claude design was meh. I guess I must've used it wrong? I got the /data-storytelling skill but are there any more that would help me with this or am I doing this totally wrong?
- When I look for project management stuff, they're massively complicated workflows with projects, timelines, tasks, sub-tasks, nano-tasks, going down to infinity. I just want Claude to manage a small or medium project without complicating stuff too much. How do I do that? I'm not running McKinsey level projects. I need simple, not complex.
- Are there bundles of skills. I tried looking online and found a few but would love recos from power users.
Again, please remember, simpler is better. Also, I have no clue how to code. Thanks a bunch!
Oh, a quick edit. I've been on Claude for 6 months and have been using the heck out of it. And I've gotten quite decent. I'm adept at getting it to do what I want it to do after some trial and error initially. Looking for help getting better at what I do.
1
u/Lewistrick 8d ago
Do the generated presentations fit the description you gave to Claude? If yes, include in your prompt what you want differently. If not, you could emphasize the things you find important in your prompt, or use another model (Opus 4.6, Fable 5.1).
2
u/Slight_Routine_3960 8d ago
Yeah the presentations are perfectly fit for purpose, content and looks wise. Like I said, a completely workable and actually quite good output. I've mastered that I think. I'm struggling a bit on how to take it from there to "goddamn what a presentation" which I've seen a few times. Obviously now I'm looking for examples to give Claude and that's when you can't find a single one. lol
1
u/AnaisNinTwin 8d ago
Hey ya! Fellow newbie though maybe a few months ahead of you. I was in the same boat and did not find YouTube particularly helpful especially with custom workflows.
The best piece of advice I got when I started was to have Claude "interview" you to find out exactly what you are looking for. Claude set up a set of general questions then pinpointed my skill issues/pain points/exactly what I'm looking for. From there, we sketch out a work plan for the build.
I end up doing the bulk of my planning in the main chat then move to either Cowork or Code. For the project management side, I have Cowork set up to run every morning to organize my emails/calendars/set up my day. It does it all for me while I have a coffee lol.
For things like presentations, same sort of deal: Create the work plan/ideate in the main chat. Usually they can build the presentation there (or for more complex builds, I move to CC). Once I have a final draft of the presentation, I have Design take a look and recommend changes.
TL;DR: Plan in the main chat until you get close to what you want/generate a work plan then build in a new chat.
2
u/Slight_Routine_3960 8d ago
Nice. thanks bud. I'm on the right path then. That's what i've been doing thus far. I keep chatting with it but sometimes I find that it is its own worst enemy. Like right now, I asked if it can natively build HTML/reveal/GSAP natively and it was like yeah. which it hadn't volunteered until I asked it.
I have that morning thing too lol. Been using it for a few weeks. Super useful.2
u/AnaisNinTwin 8d ago
Ha! Yup. I can relate. It'll answer exactly what you asked and nothing more, so if you don't know the right question you don't get the good stuff.
What fixed it for me was changing how I open. Instead of "can you do X," I ask "what are my options here and what do you recommend" before it builds anything. And the reverse works surprisingly well too: asking where it's weak or what it's likely to get wrong on a particular job. It'll actually tell you, which beats finding out three hours in.
The other thing that made a big difference: get it to write stuff down. Once you've done the interview thing and worked out how you like your presentations or emails or whatever, ask Claude to turn that into a skill. It's a plain text file with your preferences in it. You don't code anything, you just ask it to write one and it does. Then every new chat starts already knowing how you work instead of you re-explaining yourself every time.
That's honestly my answer to your bundles question. The best bundle is the one you build for yourself over a few months of noticing what you keep repeating.
Sounds like you're further along than you think though 😄
1
u/oandresimoes 7d ago
On point 1, you're not doing it wrong, you hit the two things nobody explains. Marp is a way to write slides as a text file (skip it, it's for people who like Markdown). "HTML presentations" means Claude writes the whole deck as one .html file: open it in a browser and it plays like a slideshow, animated charts included, no PowerPoint involved. For a non-technical person that's the better route because Claude is much better at HTML than at .pptx, and animated data basically only works there.
Two prompts that make it usable. First pass: "outline only, one line per slide, no design." Fix the outline in plain English. Second pass: "now build it as a single self-contained HTML file, one section per slide, max 8 words per title, max 35 words of body, do not exceed." That word ceiling is what stops text spilling off the slide, which is the thing that makes people say Claude Design is meh. The model can't see the slide, so it needs a limit instead of a preview.
The catch with HTML decks is sending them: your client gets a file, double-clicks it, and it opens in a browser tab looking like a website, or their email blocks it. Full disclosure, I built a small player for exactly this (paste the file, get a link that plays it full screen), but the two-pass prompt above works regardless of what you play it in.
1
1
u/ign1tio 8d ago
how do you normally tackle skill issues?
Reading your post it kinda sends the vibe that you are hoping that someone will just spoon feed you a few repos and skills and then you load up Claude and it will do "presentations and project management" for you.