A free guide from House of Mary
Claude,
Directed.
Ten ways to get work out of AI that sounds like a person made it.
You've watched someone pull gorgeous, on-brand work out of AI and wondered what they know that you don't. What they figured out is simple. They give Claude a job and a standard to hit, then make it earn the output. You can feel the difference in one scroll, and by the end of this you'll be doing the same thing.
Start here
The one move underneath every prompt in here.
Most prompts ask AI to make something. Write ten captions, give me twenty hooks, draft a bio. You get back exactly what that sounds like. Passable. The shape of content with none of the taste.
The prompts in this guide do one different thing. They hand Claude a role, a standard it has to clear, and a decision to make. You move from typing the work yourself to directing it. That single shift is a big part of why some feeds read like a person made them and most read like a tool was left running.
Each one is a single move you can use today. Copy it, paste your own work in, read what comes back. None of them will turn your phone into a content machine on their own, and that's on purpose. One sharp prompt gives you ONE good thing. A brand that sounds like you, running on your taste while you sleep, is a different animal. I'll show you where that one lives at the very end.
Give it a role, a bar it has to hit, and a real call to make. Ask AI for a judgment, not just a thing. That's the whole move.
Sound like a person
Get it to find the lines that sound like a brand trying too hard.
Including, especially, your own.
Let it be the editor who's tired of "fine."
You're a brand editor who has read ten thousand feeds and has no patience left for fine. Here are my last five captions. Tell me which one a stranger would actually stop scrolling for, which one sounds like everyone else in my niche, and exactly why. Don't soften it for me.
A role plus a hard question beats "make this better" every time. You're asking for a verdict, not a rewrite, and a verdict is something you can act on the same afternoon.
Make it sound like you texted it, not staged it.
Rewrite this so it sounds like I'm texting a smart friend who gets my work, not presenting to a boardroom. Keep every bit of the meaning. Lose the performance, the throat-clearing, and anything that sounds like a brand.
The quickest way to delete the AI tone is to name the human one you want instead. "Texting a smart friend" gives it a target. "Make it casual" gives it nothing.
Catch your own slop
Run it on your drafts before the internet does.
Have it flag the lines that read machine-made.
Read this caption and mark every line that sounds AI-written, like filler, or like a brand reaching too hard. For each one, tell me what a real person would say instead. No em-dashes, no "unlock," "elevate," or "transform."
AI is oddly good at spotting its own fingerprints once you ask it to look. Naming the specific tells turns a fuzzy "is this good" into a checklist it can actually run.
Catching the last ten percent that reads AI is the entire skill. Most people never even look for it.
Make it cut your carousel in half.
Here's my carousel, slide by slide. If you could keep only half of these, which do you cut, which stay, and why? I'd rather post five slides that earn the swipe than ten that lose it.
A constraint forces a decision. "Make this better" lets it hedge. "Keep only half" makes it choose, and the reasons it gives back are usually the edit you already felt coming.
Borrow the bones
Learn from what's working without becoming a copy of it.
Take the skeleton, leave the words.
Here's a post that went viral in my niche. Don't copy it. Break down what the first line is doing, what makes someone keep reading past it, and where the payoff lands, so I can build my own version on a completely different topic.
Copying a viral post gets you a weaker version of someone else's idea. Pulling its structure gets you a repeatable move you can run on anything you actually know about.
Make it interview you before it makes anything.
I want to brief an AI tool to create on-brand visuals for my business. Here's my brand and who it's for. Before you suggest a single thing, ask me the five questions a real creative director would ask, the ones that decide whether the result looks intentional or generic.
Generic in, generic out. When you make AI ask the questions first, you hand it the context that separates a directed image from a stock one. The interview is the brief.
Good direction is mostly good questions, asked in the right order.
Hear your buyer
Get the words your audience uses, not the ones marketing wishes they did.
Have it talk like three of your people.
These are my target audiences: [list them, like women-led founders, social media managers, service-based coaches]. Be three different people from across them. Write the exact sentence each one would type in a comment when they're frustrated about [problem]. Real phrasing, the way it sounds in their head, not marketing language.
Your best hooks are already sitting in your audience's own words. Roleplaying the buyer gets you closer to that language than "write me a hook" ever will. Treat what comes back as a list to check against real comments, not gospel.
Pull the real reasons they don't buy.
I sell [offer] to [audience]. List the seven real reasons someone would NOT buy, written the way the doubt actually sounds in their head, not in polite marketing language. Then rank them by how often that doubt is the one that kills the sale.
You can't answer an objection you've never said out loud. The ranking tells you which one to handle first, on the sales page and in the DMs.
Sell without the pitch
Talk about your offer in a way that doesn't make you cringe.
Find what they're actually buying.
I charge [price] for [offer]. Forget the list of deliverables. Describe what the buyer is actually paying for, in terms of the result they get and the version of themselves on the other side. Give me three ways to say it that don't sound salesy.
Nobody buys the deliverables. They buy what the deliverables get them. Pointing AI at the result instead of the feature list is how an offer starts sounding worth the price.
Make it read your bio like a stranger would.
Here's my bio and a line on what I do. Tell me what a stranger would NOT understand about who this is for and what they walk away with. Then give me the one sentence that's missing.
You're too close to your own bio to see the gaps. A stranger has three seconds and zero context, and that's the exact reader AI can stand in for.
The part most people never reach
Now imagine these stopped being one-offs.
Every prompt in here is a single good move. Useful on its own, gone by tomorrow, run again from scratch the next time you need it.
Now picture the other version. You open your laptop and the blank page isn't blank. The week's content is already drafted, in your voice, with your opinions and your hard nos baked in, waiting for you to react to instead of summon. You're editing and killing the ones that miss. The taste is still yours. The hours are back in your day.
That's what people feel when they assume I'm everywhere at once. I'm not. I taught Claude what a House of Mary line sounds like, what it would never say, and what bar it has to clear, then stayed the one who decides what ships.
Inside Hey Mary, I hand you the build. The skill that holds your taste, so Claude stops sounding like Claude and starts sounding like your brand. And how to connect Claude Code and set it loose to run that skill for you, so the work gets made while your hands stay on the only part that was ever the point: the call on what's good enough to post.
78% of people would rather see an ad a human made, even if AI could make a better one.
Canva State of Marketing & AI Report 2026, with The Harris Poll, 3,547 consumers.
Your buyer can't always tell what's AI. They still want a person behind it, and they pay more when there is one. The human touch was never the soft part of this. It's the product.
Okay, I want my Claude content system to run on actual strategy and brand alignment →The full Hey Mary guide. Install the skill, connect the system, keep your hands on the wheel.