Sanjay Singhal Toronto 56M AGO

I built a workflow for creating a living book that exists online and that I can add to, edit, and share whenever I like. I’m an occasional writer who publishes nonfiction essays about observations in life. I realized I could collect the essays into a book, but life doesn’t take an appropriate pause, so the book and the essays never really end. That raised the question: When should I publish it? I created a local Claude instance to access all the files on my laptop. Local is almost always better than a cloud instance, and you can ask Claude to enable remote control so you can access it from your phone as well. I used Opus 5.5 because I couldn’t be bothered experimenting with lower-level models to see whether they could do the task more cheaply. A friend who uses Claude professionally once told me to always use the highest model available and move down if I ran into usage limits. I’m on the monthly Pro plan. I gave Claude the locations of my existing writing on Substack and Medium.com. It downloaded all my essays and organized them into rough sections. I argued with it about the organization and approved the sections once it explained its logic. I then had Claude create a Ulysses folder for all my essays, organized into sections and chapters. I can use it to create a new essay, edit an old one, or reorganize and reorder the book, then tell Claude to update the online version. I could have had it scan the folder regularly and update the site automatically, but that seemed unnecessarily lazy. Claude created a section of a website I already owned where readers can access the living book: https://enwaken.com/read/ During the process, I also had Claude restructure and redesign my overall website several times. It’s amazing at that sort of task. I’m still amazed that I can say something like "I want blue and violet and black, but maximize the contrast between each of the colours" and it will actually pick colors that complement each other. I wish more website designers knew they could do this. Now I have a version of my book that is spectacularly easy to read online and that I can update whenever I like. It’s easier to navigate than an ePub on my Kindle and certainly easier to update. The whole process took two days, half of which was spent arguing about the organization of the chapters. Step-by-step: 1. I set up a local Claude instance with access to the writing files on my laptop and enabled remote control so I could access it from my phone. 2. I used Claude Opus 5.5 through the monthly Pro plan. 3. I gave Claude the locations of my existing essays on Substack and Medium.com and had it download them. 4. I reviewed Claude’s rough organization of the essays into sections, argued about its choices, and approved the structure once it explained its logic. 5. I had Claude create a Ulysses folder organized into sections and chapters so I could add, edit, and reorder essays. 6. I told Claude to update the online book when I changed the Ulysses folder. 7. I had Claude create the book as a section of my existing website and redesign the site as needed. 8. I now maintain a living online book that is easy to read, share, and update.