Built an always-on AI Chief of Staff that texts me.
I've been in this community for about a month now and wanted to share where things stand with one of my builds. This isn't polished by any stretch. I do have a few other workflows like content-creator, document-creator, but I needed something to help me navigate my day-to-day as I begin a couple side quests outside my normal 9-5. The goal was simple: I didn't want another chat window I have to remember to open. I wanted something that knows my priorities, reads my calendar, checks my email, and texts me when I need a nudge. Not a chatbot, more like a Chief of Staff. And the goal is to operate within the bounds of the subscription with no extra costs, while also maximizing token efficiency. The other thing I didn't want to do is implement an orchestrating harness yet (OpenClaw, Hermes, etc). The challenge for myself was to keep this as simple as possible without inflating scope. Someone in this community said once: 'constraints are just as, if not more, important than your requirements. What do you NOT want your build to do?' I've definitely taken this to heart in my workflows. ## Planning I've made a few posts about this in comments, but I cannot stress the importance of planning before you build. My method was simple: - First I brain dumped context via voice dictation and transcribed this. Simple tools: VoiceMemos, copy, paste. - Next, I worked through the planning phase with the chat function of Claude in Opus 4.6. I wanted pushback, challenge, and for the model to force me to think deeper and keep me honest. This produced the product requirement document, or PRD. This was a multi-day process (a week?) in my free-time. - For the architecture build, I used Cowork. Handed it the PRD, answered a few basic questions, and then it went on it's way. Got it uploaded to a private git repo. - Currently, I'm working thru further debugging and walking thru the checklist within the PRD in a phased approach. As you'll see below, I have setup a remote screenshare so I can also let Cowork see what I'm doing. This was the most essential because we work TOGETHER to make things happen. it's like working side-by-side with my developer and engineer.