By Dan Donovan, @askdandonovan
These are the five jobs I set up once and now barely touch: content, research, client prep, proposals and inbox. Below is what each one does, a fill-in template that gets a brilliant result, and the honest way to set them up, starting free.
The idea is simple: you're not doing more with AI, you're building the same handful of jobs once so they run themselves. Each job below is a repeatable task with a copy-paste template. Start free, get one working, add the next next week.
There are two ways to give Claude a repeatable job. Start with the free one.
A Project holds standing instructions + your real files, and Claude uses them in every chat inside it. This alone does 90% of what's below, on the free plan.
Want a job to fire automatically across all your chats without opening a specific Project? On paid plans you describe the job to Claude and it drafts the skill for you. It's a preview (the upgrade, not the starting point).
My honest advice: build each of these as a Project first (see the PROJECT guide for the setup). Once a job is dialled in and you want it everywhere, graduate it to a Skill.
Drafts posts and emails that sound like me, so I edit instead of starting from a blank page.
Draft me a [post/email] about [topic]. Match the voice in the samples I've given you:
hook first, plain and short, no jargon. If you're missing anything, ask me before you write.Brilliant when: you've dropped 2 to 3 real samples of your writing into the Project. That's the difference between "AI wrote this" and "I wrote this."
Goes wide on a topic and hands me back only the part that matters.
Research [topic]. Give me: the 3 things I actually need to know, why each matters to
[my business], and one thing most people miss. Under a page. No filler.Output looks like: a tight one-pager you can act on, not a wall of links.
Turns my notes into a clean brief before every call, so I walk in ready.
Here are my notes on [client]. Give me a one-page brief: where we're up to, their main
goal, open questions, and 3 things to raise on the call.Output looks like: a brief you can read in the lift on the way to the meeting.
Writes the proposal off a rough outline, and it sounds like me, not a template.
Write a proposal for [client]. The problem: [x]. Rough scope: [y]. In my voice:
the outcome they want, what I'll do, the next step. No corporate speak.Output looks like: something you'd send with a light edit, not a rebuild.
Drafts my replies and leaves them ready to check and send.
Here's an email thread. Draft a reply in my tone that moves it forward. Short and human.
Don't send, just draft it for me.Output looks like: a reply sitting ready, so a 40-minute inbox becomes a 10-minute review.