You've been using ChatGPT or Claude in your browser for months or years. Thousands of conversations. The same files uploaded dozens of times.
What you actually have is scattered intelligence across chats you'll never search again. Your most valuable thinking is trapped inside vendor clouds.
You might have tried GPTs, Claude Projects, Gems, or Copilot agents thinking they solve this. They don't. You're still shifting context every time. Still instructions or prompts in isolated chats. These tools don't solve the fundamental problems: scattered intelligence, context management, or building infrastructure that compounds. They're still conversations, just organised differently.
And you can't create, edit, or move files on your computer at scale. Limited tools. Limited web capabilities. The odd connector or MCP server doesn't change this.
The macro challenge: You're renting AI conversations when the future is owning your intelligence infrastructure.
The shortcomings of ChatGPT, Claude & Gemini
ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini. They're interfaces to talk to AI models. And they're increasingly insufficient as your improving AI proficiency demands persistent memory, context window management, and extensibility to execute workflows at scale.
Web-based UIs are great for conversations. Ask, answer, refine, repeat. But here's what they're terrible at:
Persistent memory across sessions. Every chat starts from zero context. Projects, GPTs, and Gems can't deliver the scale of context needed across your work. They're project-specific and limiting. ChatGPT doesn't remember your strategy from last week. Claude doesn't remember the brand voice guide from yesterday's conversation.
Context transfer between conversations. Working on a quarterly plan in one chat? Start a new chat to draft content and none of that context exists. Your thinking fragments across conversations you'll never search effectively.
Managing context windows. You've noticed answers degrade as conversations continue. Context rot sets in because you can't see or manage the context window. Impossible to know when you've hit the limit.
Example of monitoring Context Window usage
Copy paste between tools. 30+ minutes per session moving text between windows, applications and files. Not thinking, not creating, just shuttling information between disconnected tools.
Automatic invocation. No "run this workflow when I add a new file". No compounding infrastructure. It's manual labour every time, and you as the worker are the automation layer.
Portability. Your most valuable thinking lives in ChatGPT's history or Claude Projects. When a new model arrives in another tool, you can't migrate. When Claude releases a better version, your context doesn't port from GPT.
Even with a second brain in Notion or Google Drive: Having built and managed these myself, they're incredibly limiting with one-way information flow. You can store all the knowledge you want, but it doesn't pull that knowledge organically when you're talking to your AI interface. You're still the human clipboard shuttling information between two systems.
What Claude Code Is
Claude Code changes this entire paradigm. Claude Code is a general purpose agent that runs on your computer with direct access to your file system.
Yes, you can build apps with it (type a prompt, watch it create a full web application, deploy it in 20 minutes). Absolutely possible. But what most miss is that Claude Code is the best general purpose knowledge work tool available. A leverage tool, not just a coding tool.
It's a general purpose agent (not a chatbot) for anyone who works with files, documents, data, research, content, applications, and the web. Every one of us.
This opens up managing files and folders at scale on your computer: Create a file on demand. Rename hundreds of files in your folder system. Build an entire content folder system containing draft blog posts that pull context from readme.md, index.md, context.md, and strategy files. All within minutes.
This is a typical view on my screen these days in Cursor (2-4 of these windows with multiple Claude Code terminals autonomously building, researching, creating, analysing, planning).
Cursor screenshot
The beauty with Claude Code is it operates like the agent we've been promised by many vendors: give it an objective, access to context/knowledge and tools, and the ability to operate in a loop, and it will complete jobs for you. The best descriptor I've heard is that "Claude is my chief of staff now".
Technical note: Up until recently, you needed an IDE like Visual Studio Code or Cursor. You can now use the Claude Code desktop app. The terminal isn't the barrier. The perception that you need to be technical is the barrier.
If you can organise files in folders (you do) and describe what you want in natural language (you do), you can use Claude Code
Your File System IS Your Agent's Memory
This is the game-changer most people miss.
In ChatGPT: You upload files every time. Every conversation starts from zero context or are fragmented between GPTs/Projects/Gems (or sometimes a Claude Skill) trying to pull context across systems haphazardly.
In Claude Code: Your files ARE the context. Claude sees everything in the folder you opened. Automatically. Your strategy docs, brand guidelines, past content, research, and all visible without uploading or invoking. When you ask for help with a quarterly plan, it's already read your annual goals, last quarter's review, and your company values without being told.
What changes:
Workflows replace copy paste. Browser AI gives you text to copy and paste. Claude Code executes multi-step autonomous workflows. You define the outcome, it figures out the steps.
Everything you build compounds. In ChatGPT/Claude, every conversation/GPT/Project/Gem is separate. In Claude Code, you're building infrastructure: Commands, Skills, Hooks, Agents. Every workflow can become a reusable tool. My /daily-review command started by capturing daily updates in November. Now it reviews my historical updates and annual plan, hunting for patterns and insights across my entire memory system.
Tool calling capabilities. Browse and scrape the web, download files and GitHub repos, develop tools (MCP servers, Chrome plugins, applications) without touching code, search knowledge bases, process files (split/parse/update PDFs), run code to analyse data, control your workspace (create folders, move/rename files), and trigger actions across apps and systems (Google Drive, Notion, databases, n8n via MCP, etc.).
Claude Code can upgrade itself with a Meta-Learning System. You run a process (e.g. draft an article, plan a video, reference a strategy document), then you run a command (for me it's '/extract-learnings') and Claude Code analyses what you just did together: what you approved, rejected, the patterns that emerged, preferences you revealed, decisions you made. Claude Code extracts all of this automatically, then it updates your infrastructure: learnings are logged to your decision journal, content strategy files are updated with new rejection patterns, index.md files add references to new patterns, readme.md reflects the updated workflow, and context files capture your preferences. Next time you run a similar process, Claude Code already knows to reference those updated files automatically, apply the learnings, avoid the patterns you rejected, and follow the preferences you revealed. This compounds as every session teaches the system, every learning updates your infrastructure, and every update makes the next session smarter.
9 Non-Technical Knowledge Worker Use Cases / Systems
I run a consulting business and newsletter. I'm definitely not a developer, but here's what I've built:
Filling in PDFs. The bane of my existence. Claude Code has all my personal and business details in my knowledge base. I download a PDF form, ask Claude to find it in my downloads and add the relevant information. Done in seconds, all without an e-signing tool, uploading to Adobe or having to convert the document in Word.
Content curation via Chrome Extension. I've built a Chrome Extension button that sits on LinkedIn and Twitter next to the bookmark button. One click automatically saves content, runs a workflow to check if it fits my content strategy, and provides three angles in Slack. I hit "Approve" and it saves to my filing system. No copy paste. No "save to read later" graveyard.
Content Curation System button above.
YouTube transcript and insights system. Built an MCP server that pulls transcripts from any YouTube video with a single command that downloads the transcript, extracts key frameworks and insights, and files everything in my knowledge base structure. Educational content becomes searchable reference material automatically. Videos I'd normally bookmark and forget now live in my filing system where Claude Code can reference them in future work automatically.
Life planning system. Holds annual plans, quarterly reviews, weekly check-ins, and decision-making rules in folders, viewable in Obsidian and backed up in GDrive. When game planning, I run the '/decide' command and it surfaces relevant past decisions and principles. Stops me reinventing my thinking every month. Once I've made a decision, I run another command, and it saves to the decision log instantly for future surfacing.
Life Planning System
Daily review system. Every evening, /daily-review walks me through reflection questions based on current priorities. References my goals automatically. Daily reviews compound with patterns identified from previous days.
Turning everyday tasks in Claude Code into content using '/daily-changes' command. At the end of the day, I run a command that asks Claude Code: "What did I create, edit, or remove in my infrastructure today?" Claude analyses the changes, identifies patterns in how I work, and documents those preferences to ensure they're taken into account moving forward, and provides content ideas to create.
Content strategy and drafting system. Based on published posts automatically saved to my filing system. I've drafted 50+ fully fleshed video production briefs and scripts for Claude Code demos in 30 minutes of work. All aligned to my content strategy and pillars referenced as context in files. Personal favourite build: When I reject an idea, Claude Code automatically captures that rejection signal in my folder system to maintain patterns for content territories to avoid. No manually updating instructions in Projects or GPTs. Style guides, messaging pillars, and audience insights live in files for referencing when content is drafted. As new content ideas are added, a workflow autonomously runs to check for duplicates.
Allexive client delivery system. Automatically pulls transcripts from discovery workshops. Claude extracts information, defines next steps, and produces outputs: roadmaps, strategy documents, content ideas, calendar recommendations. Everything formatted and ready to present. What used to take 3 hours now takes 20 minutes.
Image generation via Nano Banana MCP. Within Claude Code I'm calling Gemini's Nano Banana to create images directly to my downloads folder. Now creating images is a tool I can bake into any workflow: reports, slides, applications.
These systems were all built without writing code. All with natural language. All organised in a way that made sense to me. Readable within Obsidian as my text editor. With created commands, skills, agents, hooks, and MCP servers that work with those files.
Now the infrastructure gets smarter as I work.
The Markdown System: Portable Intelligence
When you work in Claude Code, everything is saved as markdown files .md). Plain text with simple formatting.
Portable. Open these files in any text editor. Read them. Edit them. Search them. Not locked in a proprietary format or vendor cloud. Your content-ideas.md file works with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or whatever model releases next month.
Future-proof. If Anthropic shuts down tomorrow, you still have everything. If Claude 6 comes out, you point it at the same files. Nothing to port, there's no migration.
Your filing system becomes your agent's memory. Not chat history or vendor clouds. Your files.
Start Here
You're already using AI. You're already organising files in folders. You're already describing what you want in natural language.
Claude Code just connects these three things you already do.
I've been using Claude Code since August. Found it challenging to understand how the system works together, what to focus on, and what to ignore.
I'm now building a course for non-technical knowledge workers that shows you exactly how to set this up. Testing with a small group now. Launching publicly in the next couple of weeks.
👉 DM me or comment if you're interested and I'll send you early access when it launches.Written by Mike ✌
Passionate about all things AI, emerging tech and start-ups, Mike is the Founder of The AI Corner.
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