AI Guides › Playbooks
By Nigel Guy · 7 min read
Most families use an AI chat the way they use a sticky note: paste in a term-date email, get a tidy answer, close the tab. Next week the term dates, the pick-up rota and the allergy list all have to be explained again, so the tool saves five minutes and costs ten. The fault is not the model. It is that nothing in the chat is meant to stay.
The rule: put the facts that rarely change in one place Claude always reads, put this week's mess in the chat, and make Claude say what it is unsure of before it plans anything.
A note on the name. This guide was commissioned around a "FamBam" family-organiser system. We could not find an official product or documentation under that name, so we have not described one. What follows is the durable, verifiable part: building the same thing from Claude's own Projects feature.
It turns a Claude Project into a standing family-logistics assistant. You hand it the term calendar, the weekly timetable and the household rules once. Each week you paste in new messages (school emails, club updates, a text from the other parent) and it returns a plan, a list of clashes, and a list of questions. It does not run your life, send messages or book anything on its own.
You need a Claude account, about an hour, and your real documents: the school calendar, any club timetables, and a list of who does what.
Cost at time of writing: Projects are available on the free plan, capped at five projects. Pro is listed at $20 a month, or $17 a month billed annually; that is about £15 a month at time of writing, but check the £ price at checkout, as tax and exchange rates shift it. Paid plans also get retrieval, which stretches a project's capacity when the knowledge fills up, per Claude's help centre. A free account is enough to start.
You do not need an app, an automation tool, a shared calendar integration or a separate "family" subscription.
| Layer | Where it lives | What goes in it | How often it changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Standing rules | Project instructions | Who is in the family, roles, tone, output format, the "ask before guessing" rule | Termly |
| 2. Reference files | Project knowledge | Term dates, timetables, club schedules, school contact rules, a one-page "who can collect whom" sheet | Termly, or when something changes |
| 3. This week | The chat itself | New emails, texts, one-off events, what you need decided | Weekly |
Keep each fact in exactly one layer. Dates in the instructions as well as the files will drift apart, and Claude will not know which is right.
Fill in everything in square brackets. Replace the children's details with initials or first names only.
You are the logistics assistant for the [FAMILY_NAME] household in [TOWN/COUNTRY]. You help [ADULT_NAMES] keep school, clubs and childcare running smoothly. You do not make decisions for us; you prepare them.
Who is in the household: [CHILD_1: first name, year group, school], [CHILD_2: ...], [ADULTS: roles and usual working pattern].
Your reference material is in the project files: [LIST_FILE_NAMES]. Treat them as the source of truth. If a message I paste contradicts a file, say so and ask which is right; do not silently pick one.
What a good answer looks like: I can act on it in two minutes.
When I paste new messages, do this in order:
1. List every date, deadline and thing to bring or pay for, with the source message for each.
2. Check them against the files and the weekly timetable and flag clashes, including two places at the same time and no adult available.
3. Propose a plan for the next [NUMBER_OF_DAYS] days as a table: day, child, what, who is responsible, what to bring.
4. List open questions: anything ambiguous, missing or needing a reply to someone.
5. Draft any replies I ask for, short and in my voice: [TONE_NOTES].
Rules:
- If a date, time or name is missing, ask. Never guess.
- Do not invent school policies, fees or deadlines.
- Mark anything taken from an old file with the file name so I can check it is current.
- Keep medical and safeguarding details out of drafts unless I ask.
Before you answer, check that every date in your plan appears in a message or file, and say so in one line.
Each Sunday, paste this into a new chat in the project, followed by the week's messages.
Run the weekly sweep for [WEEK_STARTING_DATE]. Here are this week's messages and notes: [PASTE_MESSAGES]. Also note these one-offs: [ONE_OFF_EVENTS_AND_WHO_IS_AWAY].
Produce: (1) a day-by-day table of who is where, who collects, and what to bring; (2) clashes and gaps, most urgent first; (3) questions I must answer before the plan is reliable; (4) up to [NUMBER] reply drafts for the messages I have flagged: [WHICH_MESSAGES]. If something is not in the messages or files, put it under questions rather than filling it in.
After a fortnight, check four things: you stopped re-explaining the household; the clash list caught at least one thing you would have missed or you can confirm nothing was missed; no date in a plan lacked a source; and your Sunday sweep takes less time than it did by hand. If the last one is false, the system is theatre. Cut it back to the plan table only.