Better prompting runs out fast. The real jump is giving it things. Four of them, in the order worth doing them, whichever AI you use.
You explain who you are every single time, and you're the one copying things in and out.
It opens already knowing your week and your rules. You say four words and a whole routine runs.
so it remembers you tomorrow
A plain text file you keep in a folder. Your AI reads it first, before you say anything. That's the whole trick, and it's the highest-value thing on this page.
Write it as instructions, not a description. Not "I get overwhelmed easily" but "never give me more than three things at once."
You don't need to know what to name it. Ask your AI where it looks for this, and it'll
tell you. (If it has no opinion, AGENTS.md is the one most tools now read.)
Interview me, then write my rules file. Ask up to 8 short questions, one at a time, waiting for each answer. Ask how my days actually run, what I keep re-explaining to people, what I want protected, what I never want to be nagged about, and how I want you to talk to me. Then write the file. Call it AGENTS.md unless you'd rather read a different filename, in which case tell me which and why. Write it as instructions TO you, not notes about me. Rules, not descriptions. Under 100 lines. Then show it to me and ask what's wrong with it. Don't stop until I say it sounds like me.
let it see your real stuff, not your description of it
Most AI tools can now plug straight into the apps you already use, so they read your actual calendar and notes instead of you pasting screenshots.
This is where it stops feeling like a chatbot. "What's my week look like and what should I move" is a different question when it can see the week.
The honest warning: you're handing a program access to your things. Connect something boring first, see how it feels, and save the sensitive ones for when you trust it.
teach it once, run it forever
A routine written down: your steps, your order, your standards. You make it once, then say its name and the whole thing happens the same way every time.
The trap is building these for things you'd like to do. Build them for what you already do by hand and are quietly tired of. If you've done it three times manually, it's a routine.
Help me save a routine so I never have to re-explain it. The thing I do over and over: [THE THING YOU DO EVERY WEEK BY HAND] 1. Interview me about how I do it now. Every step, including the ones I'd skip explaining because they feel obvious to me. 2. Ask what "done well" looks like, and what a bad version looks like. 3. Write it down in whatever way this tool lets me re-run by name, and tell me what that way is. 4. Run it with me right now so I can see it work. 5. Tell me what you got wrong about my process, and fix it. Explain what you're doing as you go. I want to make the next one myself.
stuff that happens without you asking
Something that fires on its own instead of waiting for you. When you sit down, when you finish something, every Sunday night. The difference between a tool you remember to use and something that shows up.
Last for a reason. It's only worth it once you know what you actually want greeting you, and you learn that by living with the first three for a couple of weeks.
I want something to happen automatically instead of me asking for it. What I want: every time I sit down to work in this folder, you tell me the ONE thing that matters most today. Rules for it: - One thing. Never a list, never a count, never the word "overdue." - Pull it from my actual files, not from a guess. If you can't check it, don't say it. - Two lines maximum. First tell me whether this tool can actually do that on its own, and how. If it can't, say so plainly and tell me the closest thing that works. Then set it up, show me where it lives, and tell me how to turn it off if I hate it.
Do the rules file. Live with it a week. Every time you catch yourself re-explaining something, add that line. That one habit beats the other three combined.
← Back to the builds