The Opus 5.5 PlaybookStart with the setup

One model.
Three jobs.
Here's how.

I switched my business over to Claude Opus 5.5 the week it came out. I use it for video editing, building pages and thinking through strategy. This is the setup, the mindset and the exact prompts, so you can run the same workflows yourself.

Free guide. Copy every prompt. Change the details to fit your business.

How the work actually flows
1
You bring the raw materialFootage, a transcript, a messy brief, an idea
2
Opus 5.5 does the thinkingPlans the cut, writes the code, makes the decisions
3
Tools do the renderingVideo renderers, a browser, your host
4
You review, it learns your rulesYour notes go into a skill file for next time
The Opus 5.5 PlaybookSetup
Start here

What this playbook is.

So you commented on the video, and here it is. This isn't a spec sheet. It's how I actually use Claude Opus 5.5 in my own business, written so you can copy it.

In my words: I'm using it for everything. It's great at video editing. It's great at designing websites. It's just a better thinking model.

Now, that's my experience, not a promise from Anthropic. I'll show you exactly where the line sits in part 06. For now, here's what you'll get:

Parts 01 to 02

The setup, and the one mindset shift that makes everything else work.

Parts 03 to 05

Three workflows (video, pages, strategy) with copy-paste prompts.

Part 06

The honest limits, so you don't expect things it won't do.

Part 01

The setup

Everything in this guide runs in Claude Code inside the Claude Desktop app, with Claude Opus 5.5 selected as the model.

  1. Get a paid Claude plan. Anthropic lists Opus 5.5 in the Claude apps on the Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise plans, and in Claude Code.
  2. Install the Claude Desktop app and sign in with that account.
  3. Open Claude Code inside the Desktop app and point it at a folder for your project. Keep one folder per job: one for a video, one for a page.
  4. Select Claude Opus 5.5 in the model picker before you start the task.
  5. Put your raw material in that folder. Footage, transcripts, briefs, notes. Claude Code works best when it can read the real files, not your summary of them.
Check it worked: ask it "Which model are you, and what files can you see in this folder?" It should name Opus 5.5 and list your files.
Read before you approve. Claude Code asks before it edits files or installs anything. Approve only what you understand, and never paste passwords or API keys into the chat.
Part 02

The mindset: it's the thinking layer

This is the part most people get wrong, so let me be straight with you.

Opus 5.5 doesn't generate video pixels. It doesn't hand you a finished website out of thin air. What it does is think. It plans the cut, writes the edit decisions and the code, and then other tools render what it planned.

What Opus 5.5 does
  • Plans the edit and writes the edit decisions
  • Writes the code for pages and graphics
  • Reads your notes and turns them into rules
  • Thinks a problem through with you before you build
What the tools do
  • Render the actual video file
  • Watch footage back for quality (that's a separate video-understanding tool, not Claude)
  • Host your page (you pick where)
  • Anything that needs a connected account

So the question isn't "can the model do it?" The question is "have I connected it to the tools that can?" A model that plans, connected to tools that execute. That's the whole game.

The one habit that compounds

Every time you correct it, have it write the correction into a skill file. A skill is a plain instruction file Claude Code reads at the start of a task. Your rules go in once, and every future job starts from them. That's how the last round of your first video becomes the starting point of your next one.

Part 03 / Workflow 1

Video editing

This is the one that surprised me most.

I gave it the raw camera footage from a vertical I'd shot, plus my review notes. Split the screen so you see my real screen recording next to my face. Captions above my head, not below. Softer sound effects. A red hook box in the first frame. It went through about eleven rounds of changes on my notes. Then it updated my video-editing skill, so every future video starts with those rules already in place.

Here's the method, step by step.

Step 1: The first cut

Put your raw camera file (and your screen recording, if you have one) in the project folder. Then paste this.

Prompt: plan the first cut
I've put my raw footage for a vertical video (9:16) in this folder: a camera file with my audio, and a screen recording shot at the same time.

Before you cut anything:
1. Transcribe the camera audio with word-level timings.
2. Find every double take, false start and dead pause.
3. Show me a cut plan: what you keep, what you drop and why, with timestamps.

Rules for this edit:
- Keep the last complete take of any line I repeated.
- Never cut in the middle of a word.
- When I'm talking about something on screen, show the screen recording on top and me underneath, in sync with what I'm saying.
- Captions above my head, not over my face.
- A bold hook title in the first frame, fully visible from frame one.

Tell me which tools you need on this computer to render it, and wait for my approval before you install anything. Don't render until I approve the plan.

Step 2: Review rounds

Watch the render yourself. Write your notes the way you'd talk to an editor, with timestamps. Then send them back. Repeat until you're happy.

Prompt: a round of review notes
Here are my notes on the version you just rendered. Make a new version. Don't overwrite the old one.

- 0:04: the sound effect is too loud. Make every sound effect softer, well under my voice.
- 0:12 to 0:20: show my real screen recording here, not a graphic.
- The captions sit too low. Move them above my head for the whole video.
- 0:31: there's still a repeated phrase. Keep only the second take.

After you render, list what you changed against each note, so I can check them one by one.

Step 3: Turn your notes into a skill

This is the step that pays you back on every video after this one.

Prompt: save my rules
We're done with this video. Now go back through every note I gave you in this project and turn them into permanent rules in my video-editing skill file. Create the skill if it doesn't exist yet.

For each rule, write:
- the rule itself, in one line
- why it exists (the problem I flagged)
- how to check it on the finished render

Don't include anything specific to this one video, like timestamps or topic. Only the rules that should apply to every future edit. Show me the updated skill before you save it.

Step 4: Learn a style from a reference video

Later in the week I gave it a reference video in a completely different style and asked it to study that editing style, then build me reusable intro templates from it. It also saved the result as a skill for horizontal videos.

Watching is a separate tool. Claude doesn't watch video natively. For this step, connect a video-understanding tool that can describe the reference (shots, pacing, text on screen), and let Opus 5.5 turn that description into templates.
Prompt: learn a style, build a template
There's a reference video in this folder. I like its editing style and want my own intros to feel like it, without copying its content.

1. Use the video-understanding tool to break the reference down: shot lengths, framing, how text appears, how callouts are styled, pacing of the opening seconds.
2. Write that up as a short style spec and show it to me.
3. Build a reusable intro template in my brand colours and fonts that follows the spec. I should be able to swap in a new title and new footage each time.
4. Render one sample so I can review it.
5. Once I approve, save the style spec and the template as a skill for horizontal videos.

The same method works for ads: I've had it re-cut an existing video into an ad. Give it the finished video, the length you want and the one message the ad must land.

Part 04 / Workflow 2

Building pages

The building work I used to need a developer for.

I've used it to turn a single group call transcript into a lead magnet page plus a playbook to go with it. I've also handed it the messy notes you get when you inherit someone else's website project, and had it prep the site for review.

Now, one question always comes up: what does it deploy to? The model writes the code. You still decide where that code lives, whether that's a host like Cloudflare, your own server or whatever you already use. It's not choosing your infrastructure for you.

Transcript to lead magnet page

Prompt: call transcript to page plus playbook
The file in this folder is the transcript of a group call. Somewhere in it is one idea people found genuinely useful.

1. Read the whole transcript. Pull out the single most useful, repeatable method from it. Tell me which one you picked and why, in three sentences. Wait for my OK.
2. Then build a one-page lead magnet as a single HTML file: a clear headline, the problem, the method step by step, and a short playbook section someone can follow on their own.
3. Use only what was actually said on the call. Don't invent numbers, results or quotes. If something is missing, leave a gap and list it for me.
4. Remove every participant's name and anything private.
5. Make it mobile-first, fast, and printable. Use my brand colours and fonts.

Build it locally only. Don't publish or deploy anything.

Messy brief to site ready for review

Prompt: take over a project and prep it
I'm taking over a website project. Everything I have is in this folder: a handoff doc, old notes, some copy and a few images. It's messy.

1. Read everything first. Write me a one-page summary: what the site is for, who it's for, which pages exist, what's finished and what's missing.
2. List every open question and every contradiction between the documents. Don't guess the answers.
3. Once I've answered, build the pages that are ready, and mark anything still waiting on the client clearly on the page.
4. Give me a checklist I can walk the client through.

Keep it local. I'll choose the hosting myself.

When you're ready to go live

Prompt: hosting options, my call
The page is approved. Before you deploy anything, give me my hosting options for a static page like this, including Cloudflare and my current host. For each: what I need to set up, what it costs me, and what could go wrong.

Don't deploy until I pick one and say go.
Part 05 / Workflow 3

Strategy: the one people miss

Honestly, this is the one I'd tell you to pay the most attention to.

There's no screen recording for a strategy session. But it's the part that changes how you run a business. I've used it to run advisory-board style sessions on how to combine different marketing agents into one team. I've used it to extend a content research system I'd already built to two new platforms, Instagram and TikTok. My scheduled daily routines, like my morning briefing, run on it too.

You're not asking it to do a task. You're thinking a problem through with it before you build anything.

An advisory-board session

Prompt: advisory board
I want to run an advisory-board session on a decision in my business.

The decision: [describe it in two or three sentences]
What I know: [numbers, constraints, what I've tried]

Set up a board of five advisors with different lenses: a growth operator, a finance-first CFO, a customer advocate, a sceptic whose job is to find the flaw, and someone who has built this exact kind of business before.

Round 1: each advisor gives their view in one short paragraph.
Round 2: they challenge each other where they disagree.
Round 3: give me the decision you'd make, the biggest risk, and the cheapest test I could run this week to check it.

Mark anything you're assuming rather than taking from what I told you.

Stress-test an idea before you build it

Prompt: stress test
Before I build anything, I want you to try to break this idea.

The idea: [describe it]
Who it's for: [describe them]
What I'd build first: [describe it]

1. Give me the five most likely reasons this fails, ranked by how likely they are.
2. For each, the earliest signal that it's happening.
3. Which one could I test in under a week, without building the full thing?
4. What would have to be true for this to be worth building at all?

Be direct. Don't soften it. I'd rather hear it now than after I've built it.

Extend a system you already have

Prompt: extend an existing system
Read the system in this folder before you change anything. Explain back to me, in plain language, what each part does and how the parts connect.

Then plan how to extend it to [new platform or new use]. Reuse what already exists. List every file you'd change and why, and tell me what could break. Don't change anything until I approve the plan.
Part 06

The honest limits

I don't want to oversell this, so here's where the line sits.

What Anthropic says it's for.Anthropic's official focus for Opus 5.5 is agentic coding, computer use, knowledge work and adaptive thinking, plus sharper reading of dense charts, diagrams and screenshots. Anthropic also says it performs at the level of Claude Fable 5.1 on most work and costs less to run than Opus 5. Read it yourself on Anthropic's Opus 5.5 page and in the what's new notes.
Anthropic doesn't market it for video or design.When I say it's great at video editing and designing pages, that's my experience. Those results come from connecting it to the right tools and workflow. It's not a factory setting.
It doesn't output video files.It writes the edit decisions and the code. Renderers make the file. Watching footage back for quality is a separate tool.
It doesn't build a whole system from one idea.Different jobs still need different tools working together, and you still make the decisions: what to build, where it lives, what ships.
You still check everything.Every workflow above has a "show me before you do it" step for a reason. Keep it.
Your first week

Where to start

Don't try all three workflows on day one. Pick the one closest to money in your business.

  1. Day 1: set up Claude Code in the Claude Desktop app with Opus 5.5 selected. Make one project folder.
  2. Day 2: run the stress-test prompt on something you're about to build.
  3. Days 3 to 5: run one full workflow (a video or a page) through at least two rounds of your notes.
  4. Day 6: have it turn every note you gave into a skill file.
  5. Day 7: start the next job from that skill and notice how much less you have to explain.
The test that matters: does it help you build something real, or does it just look good in a demo? Hold every tool to that, this one included.
About the author

Muhammad Asmal

AI business growth strategist from South Africa. Over 11 years in digital marketing agency work, and using AI tools since 2018. His AI education content has passed 10 million views across TikTok and Instagram. He has served as Head AI Faculty for John Assaraf's Mastermind and has run in-person AI workshops in the US, South Africa and Dubai.