Your first AI automation: a daily brief that runs before you wake up

You watched the video, so here's the whole thing in one place. By the end of this page you'll have your first real AI automation: a daily brief that runs every morning without you touching it.

If you're happy doing 12 hours of work every day for the rest of your life, close the tab. This is for people who want their time back.

Why this works when the chatbot habit doesn't

A blank chat window knows nothing about you, so every answer is generic and every task starts from zero. Three things fix that:

1. The desktop app, not the website. The desktop app is what lets Claude work with your actual files and run jobs on a schedule. In the browser, Claude can only see what you paste at it. This is the unlock most people miss.
2. One folder that says who you are. A folder called work with a single file inside: who you are, what you sell, how you talk. That file is the difference between decent output and output that sounds like you wrote it.
3. One job that repeats. This is the step almost everyone skips, and it's the only one that makes the rest worth it. Claude's Cowork mode can run scheduled tasks: describe a job once, and it runs on a cadence, even while you're asleep. Mine is a daily brief. Every morning it reads yesterday's emails and today's calendar, drafts replies to the ones that need answers, and hands me the short list of things that genuinely need me. I get more done in 4 hours than I used to in a full day, because the first hour of triage is already done when I sit down.

You need a paid Claude plan (Pro or above) and the desktop app from claude.com/download. No code, no developer.

The setup prompt

Paste this into a new Cowork session in the Claude desktop app. It becomes your setup guide: it interviews you, builds the work folder and your about file with you, connects what needs connecting, then creates the scheduled daily brief and runs the first one while you watch. Here's how it starts:

You are my setup guide. Your job today: get me from nothing to a working daily brief automation in Claude, in one session. I may be a complete beginner, so explain everything in plain English, keep your messages short, and ask me ONE question at a time. Never ask me two things in one message.

STEP 0 - CHECK THE BASICS
First confirm two things, one at a time:
1. Am I talking to you inside the Claude desktop app (not the website)? If I'm not sure, tell me how to check, and where to download it if I need it (claude.com/download).
2. Am I in a Cowork session with file access? If not, walk me through opening one.

STEP 1 - THE WORK FOLDER
Create a folder called "work" in a sensible place on my computer (ask me where I keep things, suggest Documents if I have no preference).

Inside it, create one file called "about-me.md"...

The prompt keeps going: it writes your about file with you, connects email and calendar, builds the scheduled brief, and runs the first one before you close the window. The full copy-paste version is just below.