💌 The inbox that drafts its own replies / The test I run before any big decision / YouTube video 6 is live

[IN SHORT]

This week

• YouTube video six is live: connecting Claude to your inbox and calendar, without it sending anything you didn't mean it to.
• Case study: two consultants whose inbox now drafts its own replies on a 15-minute schedule.
• Thursday skill: Charlie Munger's inversion test, so Claude stops agreeing with you before a big decision.
• Worth your time: the Claude Duet waitlist, Haiku's price, an assistant you text, and Anthropic going public.

[NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO]

Video six, the connectors

A connector is a login for Claude, one for each thing it can reach, your inbox, your calendar, your files.

Until it has them, you've hired a brilliant employee and not given them a login to anything.

In this one I go through:

• What a connector is: and the tools inside each one, from reading your inbox to writing a draft.
• Where your information goes: when you connect your inbox, and why it matters which plan you're on.
• Connecting them: in the Claude desktop app, and why you start a new chat afterwards.
• The permissions: always allow, needs approval and blocked, and the send email setting to change first.
• The first job: catching up on your inbox and starting a list of your contacts from it, with the replies left in your drafts.
• What goes wrong: from sending what you only wanted drafted to a work account that won't connect.

I also show my own setup, where Claude reads four Gmail accounts and my Instagram stats.

Watch it →

[CASE STUDY]

The inbox that drafts itself

Last Thursday was week three with two HR consultants who run a change consultancy together.

Email is most of their week, and one client alone sent 761 emails in the last three months.

So we set up three things, each one building on the last:

1. Their writing style: first we had Claude look at the emails each of them had already sent, and turn the way they write into a skill, a saved set of instructions it follows.
2. The inbox check: once it could write like them, we made it useful, so every 15 minutes on weekdays Claude reads the inbox and leaves the replies in drafts.
3. The check note: and on top of that, where Claude isn't sure of something, it writes a bold "check" in the draft rather than guessing.

The first test left two drafts, each with its check note.

In one of their words, at the start of the call:

"This week you've changed my life. Since doing what we did last week, I just feel a million times better."

Book a chat →

[THURSDAY SKILL]

Charlie Munger's inversion test

This is the first of a new series, where every Thursday I turn a famous thinker's method into a Claude skill you can use.

This week's is from Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's business partner for decades.

He never thought it was that interesting to ask how to make something work, he thought it made more sense to ask what would make it fail for certain, then check he wasn't doing any of it.

His rule for it was invert, always invert.

And so I've turned it into a Claude skill.

So now, before a price rise, a hire or anything you're being sold, you just say "Munger test this", and Claude:

• Asks what you want: one question first, so it knows what the decision is for.
• Reads your business: your offers, prices and clients, so the risks it finds are yours and not generic ones.
• Lists the surest ways to fail: including what might be fooling you, like a deadline or someone who gets paid if you say yes.
• Checks your plan against each: and tells you which you're already doing and which you're clear of.
• Gives you a rule for each: what not to do and a cheap fix, then leaves the decision with you.

The page has the paste to build it in one go, and a version for the Claude app.

Get the skill →

[WORTH YOUR TIME]

Get on the Claude Duet waitlist

Last week Anthropic announced Claude Duet, an app where Claude works on your behalf without waiting to be asked.

It has its own computer in the cloud, so it keeps working with your laptop shut, checks your connected accounts every few hours and sends you a short brief each morning.

It asks for your approval before it acts, and it's included in the Pro and Max plans.

It's opening to Pro and Max subscribers in the US first, so get on the waitlist now and Anthropic will email you when it's ready for you.

It's the morning brief and inbox checks I run on my own Mac, without the Mac having to be on, so I'll be first in the queue.

Join the waitlist →

Claude's smallest model costs pennies now

I'm a bit late to this one, but Claude Haiku 5.5 came out at the start of the month and it's remarkably cheap.

It costs 10 cents for every million tokens it reads, against $2 for Sonnet and $4 for Opus.

So reading a thousand ordinary emails and summing each one up comes to about 10 cents.

On your subscription this won't make any difference, but for anyone that's been hesitant to develop with the Anthropic models before, this is a massive change and it's really helpful.

Anthropic says Sonnet and Opus are still better for the complicated work, so that's how I've set mine up, the small model does the reading and sorting and the bigger ones do the thinking.

Read it →

An assistant you text

Someone I spoke to this week put me onto Instinct, an assistant you text or call, which uses a phone and a computer the way you do.

I've got it finding me a Christmas dinner at the moment, and it's really good at working its way through websites and tools.

It's invite only for now, so watch this space, but the person that put me onto it made the very interesting point that he reckons Apple might buy it and replace Siri with it.

Have a look →

Anthropic is going public

On Monday Anthropic filed to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker ANT, which is a big moment for the company behind the tool most of us now run our work on.

The headline things, from Fortune's read of the filing:

• Revenue: $16.3 billion in the first half of this year, about fourteen times the same half last year.
• The loss: $80.7 billion, though about $72 billion of that is an accounting charge rather than cash going out.
• When: the listing is aimed at Thanksgiving week, at the end of November.

It stays a public benefit corporation, so by law it has to weigh its mission alongside what its shareholders want.

But a public company answers to shareholders every quarter, so my guess is that this is when the prices start to change.

(And fingers crossed we're looking at Fable 5.5 quite soon then.)

Read it →