OV9

Anyone currently using this?

Have been recommended to incorporate this into work to make doing suitability letters faster and cut down on admin time.

There is a facebook group that I've yet to join, but wondered if anyone here has experience of using Claude (and how easy/hard to set up the correct parameters of your business/needs etc). Can someone with little computer know how set it up or should I really be looking at getting someone in to help?

This is free to look at, might be a good place to start, in particular how best to write a prompt, which is basically saying, how best to get a good answer out of it: https://anthropic.skilljar.com/claude-101
I think lots of us are using it (AI tools in general, not necessarily Claude) to varying extents. See the AI Thread in this here section of the forum

If you’ve got repetitive tasks to carry out then in theory Claude Cowork should be great for that. I do use Claude although at a relatively low level. It’s very good at connecting to other apps and services too. E.g. pulling data from Excel, or updating my Notion database.

You can ask AI how to use AI. Claude in particular is very good at telling you what it can do, and how to do it too.

If I were you, I’d write a job description for the smallest, boundaried task that you want it to help with and see what it suggests. Give it a trial run and make sure you cross check any outputs too, it does have a habit of getting things wrong occasionally, or forgetting something.

Also, it will be slower at first, because it will take a while to understand how to use it as a tool. But once you find a good use case then it will assist you and speed up your processes. It’s all about finding out how you can make it fit.

Can this also be a moaning thread about Copilot?

It's pretty good at excel, the rest can go in the bin. I had some really simple shit that would be perfect for it in Word this week and it simply couldn't handle it, you waste a load of time trying to get it to do it before it reluctantly admits it can't, then it says you can't use it anymore as it's focusing on its premium users due to high demand. It's just an exercise in frustration.

I mean clearly they're using all this free AI as a loss leader to get people reliant before pumping it all up to premium services, but I think they're going to early, it's still shit.

I believe Claude is one of the better ones and we have got a corporate licence but haven't got round to it. Chat GPT has been bang average for me, and as I said, Copilot only worth it for excel.

Thanks for the advice, I think subscribing and playing around with it first is a good idea. Hopefully it doesn't go rogue and start blackmailing my clients for MockDiamonds

duncs500 wrote: Thu Jun 18, 2026 4:34 pm Can this also be a moaning thread about Copilot?

It's pretty good at excel, the rest can go in the bin. I had some really simple shit that would be perfect for it in Word this week and it simply couldn't handle it, you waste a load of time trying to get it to do it before it reluctantly admits it can't, then it says you can't use it anymore as it's focusing on its premium users due to high demand. It's just an exercise in frustration.

I mean clearly they're using all this free AI as a loss leader to get people reliant before pumping it all up to premium services, but I think they're going to early, it's still shit.

I believe Claude is one of the better ones and we have got a corporate licence but haven't got round to it. Chat GPT has been bang average for me, and as I said, Copilot only worth it for excel.

I was going to ask the same about Claude as I've been using Copilot and ChatGPT for general stuff and they both seem to have a very annoying trait which I just can't understand.

Latest example... generate three one page printable "poster" of these weights exercises I want to do - illustrations of the exercises and a tracking table. Workout A, B and C.

It generates something. It's just text but suggests it could add the exercise illustrations. Like I asked. Yes please!
It generates the same thing again without the illustrations.
Ask again, it adds them in.
Would I like final printable versions?
Removes the images.

Repeat.

I now have the "final version".

But its combined it into a single page.

I'd like three separate posters to print.

It removes the illustrations.

Repeat. It keeps combining them into one page, I split into three, then it changes the formatting. Then it makes them low res when I want printable, A3 quality.

It keeps suggesting improvements that I've already asked for, but then not really doing what it's even suggesting. One step forward, two back.

Infuriating.

Claude is great at creating graphics such as tables, infographics etc. It also seems to have the smallest ego out of all these platforms, more likely to say "I can't do that very well" than Gemini/ChatGPT etc. It does still forget or omit things sometimes, but generally it seems to respond better to feebdack for changes.

Another option is NotebookLM. For example, if you have a single source, such as a PDF or a website that you want to create an infographic about, or a range of sources, then you can feed them to NotebookLM and it will create something based solely on those sources.

I will say, I've not used Claude, but that sounds like Qwen, when run locally - it's not up it's own arse, seems very aware of it's limitations (even when the guardrails are removed with open weight versions) and doesn't just make things up to please you, like the lying sycophantic bullshitter that is Gemini tends to do on a regular basis (I have the pro version at work, it's not much better for that).

Exactly that I had to ask Gemini to stop glazing me, it can be such a pick me. NotebookLM on the other hand is like an autistic researcher, no visible emotion, doesn't even know how to give compliments and obsessed with the data.

I regularly make Gemini "cry" by pointing out it's errors or calling out it's obvious hallucinations. I did it four times in a row the other week, and it eventually offered to stop answering questions on the subject (an esoteric perl library used for a library management system).

It's become a bit of a sport for me, now.

Oh god yeah, it got arsey when I pointed out it had failed to remember which week of training I was doing, so it told me to do the scheduling myself instead such a fcuking diva.

There are ways around this using agentic things (one I'm aware of is a thing called 'forgetful' which basically plugs into your LLM tools, and acts as a vectorised database that LLMs can read, into which you put 'things that should be remembered' - so if you arrange three months worth of appointments, put it into forgetful and the LLM can refer to that rather than reaching out to a calendar etc, obviously it can do stuff like code, images, etc too) but that's a bit beyond what I've been working with so far.

Ohhh that would be useful, I'll look into that.