AI Guides › Workbench
By Nigel Guy · 6 min read
Most people build a daily AI setup by copying a list: "the five tools I open every day". They install all five, open them in a random order, paste the same context into each, and wonder why it feels like more admin, not less. A stack is a sequence. The list is the least important part.
The rule: give every tool one slot, one job and one hand-off to the next slot, and delete anything that doesn't fit a slot.
One honest note first. The idea behind this guide comes from a personal "tools I open every day" list. We can't verify anyone else's daily habits, so this guide doesn't reproduce their five tools. It keeps the durable part, the ordering, and fills the slots with tools whose features we checked against official documentation on 2026-10-04.
| Slot | Job | Example tool (checked) | Cost at time of writing | Best for | Catch |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Ask | Think out loud, draft, sort out what today is | Claude chat (claude.ai) | Free tier; Pro $20 a month, or $17 a month billed annually at $200 (about £15 and about £13 at time of writing; check the £ price at checkout) | First thing in the day, before you have a plan | Free tier has tighter limits; a chat on its own forgets your context |
| 2. Hold | Keep the standing context so you stop re-explaining | Claude Projects | Free accounts can have up to five projects; paid plans get more room | Anything you do weekly: a client, a course, a newsletter | Only as good as the instructions and files you put in |
| 3. Do | Act on files and tools, not just talk | Claude Code (terminal, desktop app, IDE or web) | Needs a paid plan; shares the plan's usage limits | Folders of files, repeated edits, anything with a command | Not a chat box. It can change files, so review what it proposes |
| 4. Repeat | Run the routine without you starting it | Claude Code Routines or desktop scheduled tasks | Same plan and limits | Weekly checks and summaries | Automate only what you have already done by hand three times |
| 5. Keep | One place where results live | Whatever notes or folder you already use | Usually free | Anything you will need next week | A fifth tool nobody opens is clutter |
Max plans start at $100 a month (about £75 at time of writing, confirm at checkout) and only matter if you hit usage limits daily. Start on Free or Pro.
Open this first and talk before you decide. Use it to turn a muddle into a short list for the day.
You are my morning planning partner. Context: I work as [YOUR_ROLE] and my main commitments this week are [THIS_WEEKS_COMMITMENTS]. Today I have [HOURS_AVAILABLE] hours.
Goal: a plan I can start in five minutes, with no more than three priorities.
Steps:
1. Ask me up to three questions if anything above is missing or unclear. Do not guess.
2. Rank the commitments by deadline and by what is blocked on me.
3. Return three priorities, each with a first physical action under 15 minutes, and one thing I should deliberately leave alone today.
Format: a numbered list, then one line starting "Leave alone:".
Before answering, check that every priority fits inside my available hours and that you invented no deadlines.
Fill in: your role, this week's commitments, today's hours.
In Claude, open Projects from your account menu (or go to claude.ai/projects), click "+ New Project", name it, then add files to the knowledge area and use "Set project instructions". Chats inside a project keep separate memory from standalone chats, which is the point: each project carries its own context. One project per recurring job, not one for everything.
You are helping me write the standing instructions for a Claude Project.
Context: this project is for [RECURRING_JOB]. The people involved are [PEOPLE_OR_AUDIENCE]. Files I will upload are [FILE_TYPES].
Goal: a set of project instructions under 250 words that I can paste into "Set project instructions".
Include: the project's purpose, the tone and spelling to use ([TONE_AND_LANGUAGE]), the output formats I usually want, three things to never do, and the instruction to ask me for missing information rather than guess.
Ask me for anything missing first. Then write the instructions in plain second person. Check that no sentence contradicts another before you reply.
Claude Code is where work happens on real files. Per Anthropic's docs, install on macOS, Linux or WSL with curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash, open a new terminal, run claude --version, then cd into a folder and run claude. The desktop app includes it behind the Code tab. A CLAUDE.md file in the folder is read at the start of every session, so put your standing rules there. It is not only for programmers: any folder of text files works.
You are working in this folder: [FOLDER_PURPOSE].
Goal: [SPECIFIC_TASK], finished so I can check it in under ten minutes.
First, list the files you plan to read and the changes you plan to make, and wait for my yes. Then do the work in small steps. Do not delete or overwrite anything; write new versions beside the originals as [NEW_FILE_NAMING].
When done, give me: what changed, anything you were unsure about, and how to undo it. Ask me if a required detail is missing.
Anthropic's docs describe Routines (cloud-run, so they continue when your computer is off) and desktop scheduled tasks (run on your machine with access to local files). Pick the second if the task touches local files. Only schedule a task whose output you have already approved by hand.
Decide where results go before you start, and say so in the prompt: "Save the summary as [FILE_NAME] in [FOLDER]". Use something you already open daily.