A daily brief that runs itself.

This step uses Claude Cowork, a separate app from the Claude chat you've been using so far. If you don't have it yet, get it before continuing. Everything else in this guide still works without it. This one step is optional.

Step 1: Ask your assistant to write the brief for you

Open the assistant you built in the last guide and paste this in:

Write me a Daily Brief prompt I can use with Claude Cowork. It should run every weekday morning and give me: the single most important thing for me today, my calendar with times and any clashes or prep needed, my unread emails sorted by what's actually important, and one line on how to handle each one. Use what you already know about my role and how I write. On Mondays, make sure it also covers anything from the weekend.

Copy what it gives you back. That's the prompt you'll use next.

Step 2: Set up the schedule in Cowork

1. Open Claude Cowork and click "Scheduled."
2. Click "New task," then choose "Set up manually."
3. Name it "Daily Brief."
4. Set it to repeat Weekdays at 8:00am.
5. Paste in the prompt your assistant just wrote.
6. Click "Run now" once to check it looks right, then leave it.

From now on, it runs by itself, every weekday morning.

One honest limit

Cowork can read your mail and calendar, but it can't send replies for you. The brief tells you what matters and how to handle it. You still write the actual reply, in a couple of clicks. That's the same draft-never-send rule from the rest of this series.

What's next

Give your assistant your full context, so the brief gets sharper the more it knows about you.