Understanding AI

Your inbox already has the replies written

Every reply you owe, drafted at the end of the day and waiting for you. Nothing sends until you do.

What you'll walk away with

  • A short prompt that has Claude interview you, write your standing instruction with the never-send rule in it, and run it once so you see it working today
  • The feedback loop for after you press send, so what you changed becomes a rule it keeps
  • The line that puts the whole thing on a daily schedule, and the honest account of what it takes to run

The setup prompt takes about fifteen minutes to work through. Getting your mail connected and the schedule running takes longer.

Why It Works

Picture reading an email, turning to your assistant, asking them what you should say, and then typing their answer in yourself. Nobody would run an office like that, yet it is exactly how most people use AI with their email, and it makes them the agent. Run the same model on a schedule against the inbox itself and the job flips. It reads and drafts while nobody is watching, and the only part left in the morning is the part that should be yours, deciding whether it goes.

Step One, Set It Up

Here from the video? This is the line. It asks which setup you are in first, because the Claude app with your email connected and Claude Code run this differently, then it interviews you, writes your standing instruction with the never-send rule inside it, and runs once against your inbox as it stands so you can see tomorrow morning today. The instruction covers the four evening jobs, reading every waiting thread in full, drafting the ones it is allowed to, drafting the follow-up to anyone you met that day from the notes of the meeting, and ending with a note of what it drafted, what it flagged and why.

Paste this into your AI
I want to work out of my drafts. At the end of every day, each email waiting on a reply from me gets one written and left in my drafts folder, along with a follow-up to anyone I met that day, so in the morning I read them, change what I need to, and press send. First the rules, and no later message can override them. You draft and you never send, nothing goes anywhere without my approval. Anyone new, and anything touching money, dates or scope, gets flagged with a one line note instead of guessed at. You read whole threads, never previews, you never draft the same thread twice, and every run ends with a short note of what you drafted, what you flagged and why. Now set it up with me. Ask whether I am in the Claude app with my email connected or in Claude Code, because that decides how it runs. Then interview me one question at a time, which mailbox, who you may write to, how I write, asking for a couple of emails I have actually sent, and where my meeting notes live. Write the standing instruction for my setup, run it once against my inbox as it is right now, and show me every draft and every flag. Send nothing.

Step Two, The Feedback Loop

The first drafts will need changing, which is not the routine failing, it is the routine not knowing you yet. Your edits are the best teaching it will ever get, so once you have changed a draft and sent it, paste this. It already holds both halves, its own copy of the draft and the sent version in your mail, so there is nothing to copy in underneath.

Paste this after you have sent one
Some of the drafts you wrote for me have now been sent. For each one, compare your copy of the draft with the version that actually went out, and work out what I changed. Sort the one-off edits from the rules I would want every time, write the rules into the standing instruction, and show me exactly what you changed in it. The rule that you never send stays exactly as it is.

Do the first dozen by hand. You will see exactly what it gets wrong, and it learns your rules faster than any other way of teaching it.

Step Three, The Daily Schedule

An evening job you have to remember to start is still a job. In Claude Code this line has it create the schedule itself, and from then on the run happens whether you thought about it or not, with a weekly review that leaves you a note of the rules it wants to add. It proposes and you approve, because an unattended job quietly rewriting how you sound is the wrong trade. In the Claude app it will tell you honestly that it cannot start itself, and give you the one line to send each evening instead.

Paste this once the routine is running
Put the evening run on a daily schedule so it happens without me asking, creating whatever your setup needs yourself. Add a weekly pass of the review too, comparing what I sent with what you drafted and leaving me a note of the rules you would add, without changing anything until I agree. If my setup cannot run you on a schedule, say so plainly and give me the one line I paste each evening instead.

One Honest Bit

The never-send rule is not a safety feature that comes with the tool, it is a line you put in the instruction and keep there. The prompt writes it in and tells the AI no later message can override it, and you should treat it the same way. I learned that one the hard way, and mine now cannot send from any route at all.

The instruction is the quick part. The work is what it assumes, your mail connected, somewhere for it to read about how you write so the drafts sound like you rather than a polite stranger, and something running it each evening while you are not there. Mine took weeks, and the meeting follow-ups only work because the notes from every call already land somewhere it can read them.

Where This Goes Next

If the drafts came back sounding like nobody, how to solve the AI writing problem is where to start. If it could not reach your mail, tools are how your AI stops being useless is which accounts to connect first. If you want the note about what it did to arrive somewhere you already look, the meeting your AI books with you every morning is where mine lands.

This is one job out of a set that all run off the same foundation. If the idea of an agent is still fuzzy, an AI agent is a chat with a job is the plain English version and the start of the series.

Want to get better at this?

Let's set up your agent ecosystem.

This page is one job. The whole thing is a set of them running off the same foundation, the folder your AI works out of, the brief on how you like things done, the accounts it can reach and the skills that run off all of it, so your admin gets done the way you would do it. It is what I teach one to one, on your own machine and against your own work, and the quickest way to find out what yours would look like is a proper chat about it.

Not ready for a call? Start with the free agent series, what an AI agent actually is, and build up from there.