I am going to be honest about how my brain works. Hand me a two hundred page document and I get about six pages in before I am thinking about what I am having for dinner. My old man can sit down and read the whole thing with notes in the margins. I cannot. So I built my working life around AI that reads it for me and gives me the highlights.
That is what Claude is for me. It is the assistant that reads everything, remembers everything, and drafts everything, so I can spend my time selling and building.
If you are a contractor or a rep, here is the working loop. You already have the raw material: meeting recordings, inspection notes, policies, contracts, estimates. You paste them in and ask for what you need. Here are five prompts I actually use. Copy them word for word.
- Prompt 1, action items: "Here is the transcript of a meeting with a building owner. Pull out every action item, who owns it, and the deadline. Then list every commitment I made, word for word, so I do not miss any."
- Prompt 2, scope letter: "Draft a scope letter for a 400 square TPO roof replacement based on these inspection notes. Professional tone, short paragraphs, no fluff. Include a section on what is excluded so there are no surprises."
- Prompt 3, the plain English policy read: "Here is an insurance policy. Summarize it in plain English for a non-lawyer. Flag the deductible, whether it is ACV or RCV, any coinsurance requirement, and every exclusion, especially anything about roofs, cosmetic damage, or matching."
- Prompt 4, follow-up in your voice: "Write a follow-up email to the owner based on this transcript. Sound like me: direct, friendly, short sentences, no corporate filler. Recap what we agreed, confirm the inspection date, and end with one clear next step."
- Prompt 5, estimate sanity check: "Here is my estimate for a full tear-off and replacement. Check the math line by line. Then list anything commonly needed on this type of job that is missing, like tear-off, disposal, flashing, or code items."
Why does prompt 3 matter so much? Because people do not read their policies, and the surprises are brutal. I have seen a renewal come through where the premium stayed flat and the owner signed without looking, not knowing coverage got quietly stripped. I watched a 470 square building end up with a full roof exclusion the owner had no idea existed. A five minute AI summary would have caught it. In Texas I looked at twenty six roofs one stretch, and exactly one had a policy worth filing on. Know what the paper says before the storm, not after.
Now the guardrails, because they matter.
First, AI drafts and a professional verifies. Every number, every date, every claim of fact gets checked by you before it leaves your outbox. The tool is fast, not infallible, and your name is on the email.
Second, know your lane. As a contractor, interpreting policy for a client crosses into unlicensed public adjusting in most states, and that is illegal. Use Claude to understand a document for yourself and to prepare good questions. When it is time to advise the client on their policy, bring in a licensed public adjuster or an attorney. The AI summary makes you informed. It does not make you licensed.
Start small. Take your last recorded meeting, paste the transcript, and run prompt 1. Ten minutes from now you will have a task list, a follow-up email, and a clean note for your CRM, and you will wonder how you worked without it.
Takeaway: You do not need to read faster. You need an assistant that reads everything and hands you the highlights.