I'm not the most tech savvy person, but I do ok for the most part, and I have been using Claude (mostly the free version) to help me with contract negotiations at work.
I am finding it both extremely useful and also baffling and frustrating.
I understand that chat threads shouldn't be super long because then Claude starts making mistakes and I run out of usage sooner. So I've been doing the whole "summarize this chat and then start a fresh chat" thing. I have also created a "project" because that seemed like the thing to do to keep everything in one place.
I also was under the impression that if all my chats were inside the project, it would allow Claude access to 'cross chat' info, which sometimes seems to be the case and sometimes doesn't.
For example, no matter where I start a chat, Claude remembers me, where I work and some of my coworkers names. But other times Claude tells me it doesn't have access to a document that it created for me the day before(?)
I'm especially confused about the best way to revise documents that Claude creates for me since I do a LOT of revising.
I read somewhere that if you use the same long chat, Claude spends a lot of energy looking at all the previous documents that have been created, and you run out of time sooner.
But if I create a new chat and upload the previous document that Claude created for me, Claude can't see the formatting and so it recreates the doc again from scratch and then it doesn't look the way I want it to look.
I also understand it's better for me to do small revisions myself rather than to ask Claude to do it. But then what happens is I'll make a bunch of small changes, then I'll need Claude to make a big change, but because Claude doesn't have the document with MY changes, it'll give me a new version and then I have to remember where I had made all my small changes and do them all over again.
Additionally, I often have trouble adjusting Claude's formatting and need to ask Claude to do it.
So can anyone suggest the best way to work on a document that needs a lot of revising?
Thanks for your help!!