Go build something

Start Here

Most episodes end with some version of go build something with this. Then we hang up, you go back to your day, and you're left holding a nice feeling and no idea what to actually type.

So here's what to type.

The prompt below works in whatever you already have open — Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, the one your employer picked for you. You don't need a paid tier, a plugin, a course, or a vocabulary. You need a text box and about fifteen minutes.

One thing worth internalizing before you start, because it is the whole unlock: you are allowed to ask it questions about itself. What it can do, what it needs from you, why the last answer was bad, how you could have asked better. People who get a lot out of these tools are mostly just people who ask a lot of dumb questions early. The machine does not judge, does not remember that you asked, and does not tell anyone.

The one prompt

It interviews you first. That's deliberate — you get a much better answer from a machine that knows what your Tuesday looks like than from one guessing at a job title. Answer honestly, including the parts where you drop things.

Paste this into any AI

I want you to help me build a personal chief of staff — a setup where you help me keep track of my work and my life, and get a little better at both every week.

Start by interviewing me. Ask one question at a time and wait for my answer before asking the next. Cover:

1. What I actually do all day — my job, the parts of it I own, who I answer to, who answers to me.
2. What I keep dropping, forgetting, or redoing.
3. What information comes at me regularly — email, meetings, articles, podcasts, notes on my phone — and what happens to it after it arrives.
4. What I want to be better at six months from now.
5. What tools I already use or pay for, so we don't invent new ones.

Ask follow-ups where my answers are vague. Push back if I start describing a tool when I should be describing a problem.

When you have enough, stop interviewing and give me:

- One paragraph, in plain language, describing what my chief of staff should do for me.
- Three things we could build first, ordered by how much they'd help divided by how hard they'd be. For each: what it does, what you'd need from me to make it work, and roughly how long a first version takes.
- The single smallest thing I could do today, in under fifteen minutes, that would prove the idea to me.

Then ask which one I want to start with and walk me through it step by step. Assume I have no technical background unless I tell you otherwise. If I get stuck, don't hand me a longer explanation — ask me what specifically didn't work.

Or, if that's already too much

The shortest version of the same idea. It works better than it has any right to.

I want to use you better. Ask me five questions about my work, then tell me three things you could take off my plate.

Four things that make this go better

Answer the interview like a person, not a résumé

The useful stuff is in what you keep forgetting and what you redo every month, not in your job title.

Finish one small thing before starting a big one

The first version should be embarrassing and done. A grand system you never finish teaches you nothing.

At the end of every session, ask how you did

“Where was I unclear? What would have made this faster?” The answers compound. That's the actual skill.

Give it your real material

Your notes, your transcripts, your actual documents. Generic input gets generic output, every time.

A litany of ideas

Some of these will be an obvious yes for you and the rest will be an obvious no, and which is which says more about your week than about the idea. Take the two that make you go oh, I actually would use that. Ignore the other ten.

Anyone juggling more threads than they can hold

The morning brief

The most-used version of this in practice: a standing conversation that tells you what today looks like before you've had coffee.

Read the prompt
Act as my chief of staff. Every time I say "brief me," give me:

1. What's on my plate today, in priority order.
2. Anything I said I'd do that I haven't done.
3. One thing I'm likely forgetting, based on what we've talked about before.
4. One question I should be asking myself today.

Keep it under 200 words. No preamble, no encouragement, no summary of what you just did. Start by asking me what you need to know to do this well.

Anyone who has done the same hard thing twice

Mine your own history for a playbook

You already solved it once. The record of how is sitting in your chat history, your email, or your notes — and most tools delete it on a timer.

Read the prompt
I'm going to give you the record of a project I finished — my notes, chat logs, emails, whatever I have.

Read it and build me a repeatable playbook for the next time I do this kind of work:

- The phases, in the order they actually happened (not the order I planned).
- What I got wrong the first time and how I'd know earlier next time.
- The decisions I had to make, and what information I needed to make each one.
- A checklist I could hand someone else.
- Where the time actually went, and which parts are the ones worth automating.

Be specific to what's in the record. Don't give me generic project-management advice. If something important is missing, tell me what to go find.

Anyone who suspects they're using this badly

Ask where you're failing

The cheapest unlock on this page. Ask the thing you're using how you could use it better, and it will tell you.

Read the prompt
Look back at how I've been talking to you.

Where am I failing? Where am I giving you too little to work with, asking the wrong question, or stopping short of what you could actually do for me?

Give me five specific habits to change, each with a before-and-after example using something I actually asked you. Be blunt. I'm not looking for reassurance, I'm looking for the gap.

Anyone with 4,000 saved posts they've never reopened

The bookmark graveyard

Saving something feels like reading it. It isn't. This turns a hoard into a queue that comes back around.

Read the prompt
I'm going to give you a pile of things I saved — bookmarks, links, highlights, screenshots.

Sort them for me:

- Group them into themes, and name each theme in my words, not category labels.
- Within each theme, flag the three most worth my time and say why.
- Tell me which themes I keep saving into but never act on — that's probably where I'm lying to myself about my interests.
- Give me five that connect to each other in a way I probably didn't notice.

Then set up a habit: every week, resurface five of these to me, weighted toward the ones I said mattered and away from the ones I've already seen.

Managers, and anyone who leads without feedback

Meeting tapes as a mirror

Record your own meetings and point the analysis at yourself instead of at the action items. It's uncomfortable and it works.

Read the prompt
Here is a transcript of a meeting I ran. I don't want the action items. I want the read on me.

- Where did I dominate the conversation, and what got lost when I did?
- Where did I avoid a conflict I should have named?
- Where did I ask a real question versus a leading one?
- Where did I not do my job — as a leader, a colleague, or the person in the room responsible for the outcome?
- What would the most critical person in that meeting say about my performance afterward?

Cite specific lines. Don't soften it, and don't compliment me before the criticism — I'll discount everything after the compliment.

Commuters, dog-walkers, anyone who thinks out loud

The drive-time inbox

Your best thinking probably happens where you can't type. Talk instead, then hand over the transcript.

Read the prompt
I'm going to paste transcripts of me talking to myself — in the car, on a walk, thinking out loud with no structure.

Every time I do, give me back:

- The three ideas worth keeping, stated more clearly than I stated them.
- Anything that's actually a task, pulled out as a task.
- Anything I've now said more than once across sessions — that's the thing I actually care about.
- One question that would move the best idea forward.

Ignore the rambling, the false starts, and the parts where I lose the thread. Don't summarize the whole thing back to me.

Job seekers, and anyone who wants to sound current

A sweeper for your corner of the world

Not a news feed. A standing brief on the twenty-mile radius around your own job, in the language you'd use in an interview.

Read the prompt
I work in [YOUR FIELD], specifically on [WHAT YOU ACTUALLY DO].

Build me a standing weekly brief on my corner of that world. Each week I want:

- Three developments that would change how someone in my seat does their job.
- One thing my competitors, peers, or the companies I'd want to work for did.
- One number that moved, and what it means for me specifically.
- One thing I could say in a conversation next week that would make me sound like I'm paying attention.

Skip anything that's just industry press-release noise. If a week is genuinely quiet, tell me it's quiet instead of padding it. Start by asking me what you need to know about my role to get this right.

Anyone who reads a lot and retains none of it

Make it less fleeting

You read the good thing once and it evaporated. Repetition is the whole fix, and it's the part nobody builds.

Read the prompt
I'm going to give you things I want to actually remember — passages, ideas, frameworks, quotes.

Turn each one into:

- A one-sentence version in plain language.
- A question I'd have to think about to answer, not one I could recognize.
- A situation in my own life or work where it would apply.

Then quiz me. Start with the ones I added longest ago, mix in the newer ones, and go harder on anything I get wrong or answer slowly. Don't tell me the answer until I've actually attempted it.

Anyone who works across sites, clients, or accounts

The context handoff

You knew this last time you were here. You will not know it when you pull into the parking lot.

Read the prompt
I move between a few different places, clients, and accounts, and I lose the thread every time I switch.

Keep a running file per context. When I say "I'm at [PLACE]," give me:

- What happened last time I was here.
- What I said I'd follow up on.
- Who I need to talk to and what about.
- Anything from elsewhere that's now relevant here.

When I'm done, ask me three questions to capture what changed, and update the file. Keep the questions short — I'll usually be answering them in a car.

Anyone who will have to touch this again in a year

Write the SOP for future you

The person who won't remember how this works is you, twelve months from now. Write it down while you still know.

Read the prompt
I just finished setting something up and I'm the only one who understands it. In twelve months that will include not me.

Ask me what I built, then write a maintenance SOP for the version of me who's forgotten everything:

- What this is and what it's for, in two sentences.
- Where everything lives.
- The routine maintenance, and how often.
- The three things most likely to break, and the first thing to check for each.
- What to do that would be actively bad.

Write it for someone competent but with zero context. No jargon I haven't defined. When you're missing something, ask me rather than guessing.

Anyone who'll be asked what they've built lately

Something to point at in an interview

Increasingly the interview question is what you do on your own, with these tools. Better to have an answer than a position on it.

Read the prompt
I want something small and real that I built with AI and can talk about in an interview — ideally connected to the actual work I do.

Interview me about my job and my interests, then propose three projects I could finish in under a weekend that would:

- Be genuinely useful to me, not a demo.
- Show judgment about my own field, not just that I can use a chatbot.
- Give me a story with a before and after.

Rank them by how much they'd impress someone hiring for my kind of role. Then pick the best one and give me the first three steps. I'd rather finish a small thing than start a big one.

Anyone walking into a meeting under-prepared

The pre-read

Not a summary. The four things you'd be embarrassed not to know, plus the question nobody in the room is going to ask.

Read the prompt
Here's a document I'm supposed to have read before a meeting. I have ten minutes.

Give me:

- The four things I'd be embarrassed not to know.
- What this document is quietly asking for, if anything.
- The weakest claim in it, and how I'd probe it politely.
- One question that would make the room think harder — not one that makes me look smart.

No executive summary. Assume I can read; assume I couldn't find the time.

Where this came from

We promised this page on-mic in Roll Your Own Problems, about thirty-three minutes in, mid-argument about whether “build your own chief of staff” is useful advice or just two guys describing a hobby.

Sean: “Hey Claude, we're gonna take an action. We're gonna put a page on our site that is going to give people a prompt that they can paste into an AI of their choosing and it will help them get started on what they need to do. Because I think that's all people need.”

Dan: “I like that. And then also just like a litany of ideas that might be yeses for some people, no's for others.”

So that's the page. If you build something out of it — or if one of these prompts is bad and you can tell us why — we'd genuinely like to hear it. Being wrong on the record is more or less the format.

Stay in the loop

Get an email when each new episode drops — including Tax Literacy episodes as they air.