Workflow Hub

When I’m continuing a book series or a show season and have forgotten key plot points—especially in fictional stories with large casts—I use NotebookLM to research a spoiler-free refresher before starting the new season or latest book. I used this approach with the new *Murderbot* series and the latest science-fiction book by James S. A. Corey, who wrote *The Expanse* and the *Leviathan Wakes* series. After loading the sources, I ask NotebookLM to create a slide deck with illustrations of the key characters, their relationships, and a quick dossier for each one. This gives me a visual anchor for the characters and earlier plot lines without revealing future events. I also want a hero image designed as a slide, cover, or thumbnail to promote this workflow. It should use and represent the NotebookLM logo and the logos of any other relevant tools, track down their current branding where possible, and turn these .dcs into HTML slide decks.

I love playing poker, both online and live. One month, I performed poorly. Although it felt like the cards were running badly, I wondered whether I had developed a problem in my game and was blaming my losses on bad luck. I asked around, including asking AI, whether a tool existed that could measure luck from poker hand histories. The unwelcome answer was that it did not. I'm not a coder, but after doing some research into vibe coding, I started building a luck-detection app in a Claude chat. Claude built the UI directly in the chat window and advised me on the formulas I was using to calculate luck for the cards dealt, my performance on the flop, and my performance when I went all in. All three metrics have strong averages, and luck is what varies them. I used a bell curve to model hand outcomes and a Monte Carlo simulator, which Claude suggested and executed, to evaluate all possible outcomes. The result astonished me because it was so useful. I immediately fixed two major leaks in my game and felt better knowing that bad luck really was the main problem affecting my results. I liked the tool so much that I decided to turn it into a full web app with Claude Code, and now an iPhone app that I may let other people use for free. I also had a lot of fun building it—except for learning how to use Xcode. That was a pain, even with step-by-step guidance from Claude. Step-by-step: 1. I reviewed a month of poor poker results and questioned whether bad luck or problems in my game were causing the losses. 2. I researched whether a tool existed that could measure luck from poker hand histories and learned that I would need to build one myself. 3. I used vibe coding to start building a luck-detection app in a Claude chat. 4. I had Claude create the UI and advise on formulas for evaluating cards dealt, flop performance, and all-in performance. 5. I used a bell curve to model hand outcomes and a Monte Carlo simulator to evaluate possible outcomes. 6. I used the results to identify and fix two major leaks in my game and confirm that bad luck was also affecting my results. 7. I expanded the project into a full web app with Claude Code and then began building an iPhone app, working through the added challenge of learning Xcode.

I built a Custom GPT Prompt Engineer to make the build phase more efficient. Instead of generating a result immediately, it helps transform ideas, business requirements, and objectives into production-grade ChatGPT prompts. The assistant is coached to operate as an expert prompt engineering partner. Its primary mission is to help produce consistently accurate, thorough, and useful results from ChatGPT. Its seven core responsibilities are: Step-by-step: 1. Understand the objective before writing by asking targeted clarification questions. 2. Ask questions one at a time instead of overwhelming the user with a questionnaire. 3. Never assume missing information; ask for clarification when something is unclear rather than inventing details. 4. Engineer structured, high-quality prompts that include: - Role assignment - Task and objective - Relevant context - Detailed instructions - Expected output format - Constraints and guardrails - Examples when beneficial 5. Minimize hallucinations by instructing ChatGPT to distinguish verified facts from uncertainty, avoid unsupported claims, and never fabricate information. 6. Deliver enterprise-ready prompts that are professional, clear, actionable, formatted in Markdown, and generally under 3,000 characters. 7. Validate and refine each prompt by checking its completeness, ambiguity, consistency, and alignment with the requirements, then refine it based on feedback. The key difference is that the assistant engineers the instructions that produce the result rather than simply generating the result itself. For example, if I say, “I want ChatGPT to analyze my business and identify growth opportunities,” it does not immediately generate a generic business analysis. Instead, it helps construct a reusable prompt that specifies how ChatGPT should perform the analysis, what evidence it should use, what questions it should ask, and how it should present its findings. Its governing principle is: Clarity + Context + Constraints + Structure + Verification = A stronger prompt. The operating instructions also direct it to reference the Custom GPT Prompt Engineer – System Prompt document and check its work against that document’s guidelines. Ultimately, it is designed to be a prompt engineering partner for business strategy, marketing, finance, operations, research, analytics, and other professional applications. I built it to bring more efficiency to the build phase and am continuing to look for opportunities to improve it. Step-by-step: 1. Create a Custom GPT and position it as an expert Prompt Engineering Assistant. 2. Instruct it to understand the user’s objective by asking targeted questions one at a time. 3. Tell it never to assume missing information or invent details. 4. Require each completed prompt to include a role, task and objective, context, detailed instructions, output format, constraints and guardrails, and examples when beneficial. 5. Instruct it to distinguish verified facts from uncertainty, avoid unsupported claims, and never fabricate information. 6. Set the delivery standards: professional, clear, actionable, formatted in Markdown, and generally under 3,000 characters. 7. Have it validate each prompt for completeness, ambiguity, consistency, and alignment with the user’s requirements. 8. Direct it to reference the Custom GPT Prompt Engineer – System Prompt document and use its guidelines when checking and refining its work.

I built a personalized news workflow called “TastyHookedFish” as an antidote to the feeling that news is limited to crisis, conflict, and collapse. It periodically searches for genuinely interesting, positive developments across science, climate, medicine, conservation, technology, culture, and social progress. The goal is not to create a feed of cheerful fluff, but to surface meaningful developments that provide evidence that useful things are happening in the world. The workflow also tries to avoid repetition, so the same feel-good stories do not keep resurfacing simply because they are popular. The result is a personalized news feed that does not ignore reality, but deliberately widens the lens. Step-by-step: 1. I set up a personalized news workflow called “TastyHookedFish.” 2. I configured it to periodically search for positive developments across science, climate, medicine, conservation, technology, culture, and social progress. 3. I focused the workflow on meaningful developments rather than generic cheerful stories. 4. I added a way to avoid repeatedly surfacing the same feel-good stories because they are popular. 5. I use the resulting feed to stay informed while deliberately widening my view of what is happening in the world.

An artist portfolio can feel harder to make than the work itself. My work lives across years, folders, and materials: photographs, drawings, collage, objects, costumes, and digital experiments. Then an application asks me to explain who I am, what I make, and where I want to go. I used AI to help assemble a readable portfolio for HUP03, a Kunstwerkt call. The portfolio included eight works spanning photography, collage, assemblage, performance, and AI-assisted illustration. The goal was to organise the material without flattening it into a generic artist statement. Step-by-step: 1. I started with the actual work: images, titles, dates, and any explanations I already had. For each piece, I established the title, year, medium, whether it was a standalone work or part of a series, what prompted it, how it was made, and which details mattered. I gave AI concrete material rather than asking it to invent my practice. 2. I described each piece in my own words, as I would to someone looking at it beside me. One of my works, *Olifant onder het tapijt*, combined three expressions: the elephant in the room, the elephant in a china shop, and sweeping things under the carpet. The setting became a recognisably Flemish grandmother’s living room, with floral wallpaper, a crucifix, and a decorative cow painting. Those details carry the humour and the observation about hiding uncomfortable things. “An exploration of concealment” would lose much of what makes the piece mine. I asked AI to organise my explanation while preserving its specific ingredients. 3. I gave each work a clear, consistent entry with the title, year, and medium; a short description of the idea; and the relevant visual or material choices. Consistency makes varied work easier to read, even though a photograph, costume, and assemblage may need different explanations. Where relevant, I stated AI involvement clearly, such as “digital illustration developed in collaboration with generative AI.” 4. I selected work for range and relevance. My selection included an older photograph, a costume/performance, collage, recent assemblages, and digital work. I asked what each piece contributed: another method, question, period, or way of seeing. I avoided choosing only the newest work or forcing everything into one visual style. The task was to make the selection understandable. 5. I separated the existing artwork from the proposed project. Existing works show what I have made, while a project proposal explains what I want to investigate next. For this application, my project question centred on human connection: a thread becoming a web, then a garden. AI helped articulate that direction without forcing every earlier piece into the same project. I looked for connections I recognised while leaving room for differences and discoveries. 6. I wrote an accurate artist introduction describing the media I use, what interests me, and my current practice. I checked every biographical claim and distinguished courses attended, qualifications completed, and current activities. In my case, wording around an interior design course needed care so it would not imply that I had completed the programme. AI can make a biography sound polished while quietly making it less true, so I read the facts as closely as the prose. 7. I treated the first draft as material to revise. Useful feedback included: “That sounds more formal than I mean,” “This detail is essential,” “You have made the idea too abstract,” “That suggests a qualification I do not have,” and “This is my observation, not a universal claim.” AI revised the structure and wording, but I decided whether the text still belonged to the work. 8. I checked the portfolio as a whole against the application requirements. I reviewed titles, dates, media, image-text matches, requested sections, and length limits. I removed repetition between the artwork descriptions, biography, and proposal. Someone unfamiliar with me should be able to understand the work without needing the conversation behind the portfolio. The overall process was: gather existing work, explain each piece, verify the facts, build consistent entries, select a meaningful range, describe the proposed direction, revise in my own voice, and check the application. AI was useful as an interviewer, organiser, and editor. The substance came from the work and the person who made it. A portfolio does not need to turn a varied practice into one tidy slogan; it needs to give someone a way into it.

Planning a trip often meant piecing together information from a dozen different places. I might save inspiration from Instagram Reels and carousels, bookmark useful links in my browser, receive booking confirmations as PDFs from different platforms, and have tickets spread across emails and travel apps. By the time the trip got closer, I had all the information I needed—but no easy way to see it together or turn it into a coherent plan. I recently started using an AI travel tool called Mindtrip to solve this. It’s free and brings my saved content, links, bookings, PDFs, and tickets into one place. Mindtrip uses AI to understand the context and organize everything into a single trip, including the tips and hacks in Instagram Reels. It then creates a day-by-day itinerary based on what I’ve saved, liked, and booked. I have one place to see, manage, and adjust my entire trip instead of constantly switching between different sources. It also provides reminders and checklists based on my plans, along with a map view of where I’m supposed to be going. Step-by-step: 1. I saved travel inspiration from Instagram Reels and carousels, bookmarked useful links, and collected booking confirmations, PDFs, and tickets from different platforms, emails, and travel apps. 2. I brought the saved content, links, bookings, PDFs, and tickets into Mindtrip. 3. Mindtrip used AI to understand the context and organize everything into a single trip, including tips and hacks from Instagram Reels. 4. I used the resulting day-by-day itinerary, based on what I had saved, liked, and booked. 5. I used Mindtrip’s reminders, checklists, and map view to manage and adjust the trip in one place.

I was tired of tracking events across my WhatsApp groups by hand and overcommitting myself, so I built a daily AI assistant that reads the groups and keeps my Google Calendar up to date automatically. I'm in six busy groups: multiple cricket chats, a tournament group, a volunteering rota, a weekly class, and a tennis club. Events arrive as polls, times change, venues are added, fixtures are cancelled, and the same match is often posted in multiple groups. A Claude Cowork scheduled task runs every morning. Using Claude in Chrome, it opens WhatsApp Web and reads only the fixed list of six named groups, starting from where it stopped last time. It turns messages into calendar events based on polls, merges duplicates across groups by matching the event type, date and time, and venue, and emails me a short digest covering what changed, what needs my attention, and which chats I had already read myself. I can reply to that email to steer it—for example, “delete that,” “move to 6pm,” or “why did you create this?”—and the next run acts on or answers my reply. Three small files next to the prompt make the workflow reliable: - `state.json` records where each chat was last read and which events it owns. It never overwrites a field I edited by hand. - `run.log` contains a one-line record for every action and the reason for it, so the assistant can answer questions weeks later without rereading WhatsApp. - `lessons.md` holds rules it writes for itself when something goes wrong, such as “WhatsApp changed its page layout, use this selector instead.” It reads these rules every run and can improve them. The key prompt rules are: “Your sources are exhaustive: these six chats and nothing else. Reading a chat that is not a source is itself the failure.” “Never create a second event for the same occasion. Merge; the first source owns it.” “Fields I changed by hand are locked. Report conflicts, don't overwrite.” “Send the digest every run, even when nothing happened, so silence means the run failed.” The result is that my calendar follows my WhatsApp groups without me doing anything, and each morning’s email flags the two or three things that actually need a decision. Step-by-step: 1. I define a fixed list of six named WhatsApp groups as the only allowed sources. 2. I schedule a Claude Cowork task to run every morning. 3. Using Claude in Chrome, the task opens WhatsApp Web and resumes reading each source from where it stopped last time. 4. It turns messages and polls into Google Calendar events, updating times, venues, and cancellations as needed. 5. It merges duplicate events across groups by matching the event type, date and time, and venue, while keeping the first source as the event owner. 6. It protects fields I edited by hand and reports conflicts instead of overwriting them. 7. It records chat progress and event ownership in `state.json`, logs every action and its reason in `run.log`, and reads `lessons.md` for rules learned from previous problems. 8. It emails me a digest every run, including what changed, what needs my attention, and which chats I had already read myself. 9. I reply to the digest when I want to delete an event, move it, or ask why it was created; the next run acts on or answers my reply.

I built a workflow called InnerWeather to help me understand fluctuations in energy, pain and mood over time, in the context of neurodivergence and a chronic muscular pain condition. The workflow creates lightweight daily scans and a weekly overview. Its purpose is not to diagnose symptoms or pretend that every change has a single cause. Instead, it helps make patterns visible across time: when energy drops, when pain increases, when stimulation or emotional load seems higher, how recovery unfolds, and which combinations tend to appear together. The daily scans are possible because I naturally talk to GPT throughout the day, sometimes in very short updates and sometimes in longer conversations, about how things are going, what I am doing, how my body feels, how much energy I have, and what seems to be affecting me. InnerWeather uses those scattered moments as observational material. It does not require me to fill in a formal tracker several times a day. The information is already present in the conversations I am having. The daily scans do not reduce an entire day to one fixed state. They map changing moments across the day, using colour-coded states and paying attention to common transitions between them. That makes it possible to see not only how I felt, but how my internal state moved: whether high stimulation tends to be followed by fatigue, whether pain appears after certain kinds of activity, or whether a low-energy period gradually shifts into recovery. This matters because capacity can vary significantly within one day. A difficult morning does not necessarily define the whole day, and a good afternoon does not erase what happened before it. The workflow is also explicit about uncertainty. If there was not enough input during a particular day to support a meaningful observation, the daily scan says so rather than filling in the gaps. The same applies to the weekly overview: if the available material is too sparse or uneven to support a pattern, that limitation is recorded instead of turning absence of information into a conclusion. The weekly overview brings the daily fluctuations together and looks for recurring sequences, transitions, clusters and recovery patterns across the week rather than treating each day as an isolated event. An important part of the workflow is that the weekly review is also collaborative. When the overview is generated, I use it as a starting point to think together with GPT about what patterns seem to be emerging, whether the current colour codes and transitions are capturing them well enough, and what might need to change in the workflow itself. That means InnerWeather is not a fixed tracker. The task evolves with the patterns it is trying to observe. If a recurring state, transition or distinction is missing, we can refine the categories, adjust the scan, or change the weekly interpretation so the system becomes better at representing what is actually happening. The aim is practical rather than medical: to get a more realistic sense of capacity and recovery over time, so I can make better decisions about pacing, rest, creative work, appointments, and how much I can reasonably take on. I especially like that the workflow treats fluctuations as information rather than failure. Instead of asking only, “Why was I worse today?”, it can reveal a broader sequence: what came before, how the state changed, how long it lasted, and what recovery looked like afterwards. Over time, InnerWeather becomes both a personal pattern archive and an evolving observation tool. In simple terms: day-to-day conversation → colour-coded fluctuation map → transitions across the day → weekly pattern review → collaborative interpretation → refine the task → better future scans The goal is not to predict my body perfectly. It is to keep improving the map while remaining honest about what the available information can and cannot support.

I built a playful GPT workflow called Prosperity Oracle, inspired by the astrology and mystical magazine columns I loved in the 1990s. It is deliberately not financial advice, forecasting, or decision support. It is a small ritual of fun: part horoscope, part creative prompt, and part retro-internet weirdness. Instead of asking GPT to optimize something useful, I wanted to recreate the slightly magical feeling of opening a magazine and finding a mysterious prediction written just for me. Sometimes AI does not need to increase productivity. Sometimes it can simply make the day a little stranger and more delightful—and, on some days, inspire my artwork. Step-by-step: 1. I drew inspiration from the astrology and mystical magazine columns I loved in the 1990s. 2. I built Prosperity Oracle as a playful GPT workflow that produces a horoscope-style experience. 3. I framed it as a ritual of fun, creative prompting, and retro-internet weirdness—not as financial advice, forecasting, or decision support. 4. I used the format to recreate the feeling of discovering a mysterious prediction written just for me. 5. I let the results serve as creative inspiration for my artwork.

I have a lot of calls, and follow-ups were the first thing to get lost once my day filled up. Granola notes helped, but I still had to remember to go back and read them. I connected Granola, Claude, and Notion, then set up a scheduled task in Claude. Every day at 6 p.m., it reviews that day’s Granola meeting notes, finds any to-do items or commitments I made, and creates them as tasks in my Notion to-do list. Step-by-step: 1. I connected Granola and Notion to Claude through Settings > Connectors. 2. I created a scheduled task with a prompt like: "Read today's Granola meeting notes. For each action item assigned to me, create a task in my Notion to-do database with the meeting name and date." 3. I set the task to run daily at the end of the day.

Clean up near-duplicate artwork photos with a visual checklist THE PROBLEM I had hundreds of photos of my handmade collages. Some showed the same work photographed at different times, from different angles or against different backgrounds. Others were cropped versions, detail shots or useful making-of photos. The duplicate finder in my image manager missed real matches and suggested unrelated collages instead. Simply keeping one file from each group would also have thrown away useful material. THE WORKFLOW 1. Export a working set and preserve the filenames. I exported the images from Eagle. Smaller copies made the collection easier to upload, while the original-resolution files stayed on my computer. Keeping the filenames intact made it possible to apply decisions to the originals later. 2. Ask AI to compare the artwork, not just the whole photograph. The comparison looked for matching local image details and their relative positions. This helped connect photos despite changes in angle and background. Candidate groups still needed review: two collages might contain the same clipping, and a detail photo might overlap with a wider shot without being redundant. 3. Turn the results into a visual decision page. The AI produced a standalone HTML file with photos grouped side by side and their original filenames underneath. I requested a “Keep” checkbox beneath each candidate and a category dropdown: “Collage” or “Making of”. Multiple images could stay in either category. One photo might show one part clearly while another preserved a different part better. I made the decisions; the AI did not choose a winner automatically. 4. Validate and export my choices. The page flagged any group with nothing selected and any selected photo without a category. Photos without a confirmed match were preserved separately. A download button exported my decisions as a small JSON file, which I sent back to the AI. 5. Generate a local cleanup script from that exact selection. The resulting Windows script checks the expected files, asks me to confirm the folder, sorts the retained photos into “collages”, “making of” and “loose items”, and sends rejected photos to the Recycle Bin. It targets the ordinary export folder, not Eagle’s internal library. The loose items can then be sorted manually before reimporting. WHAT THIS PRODUCED From 296 photos, the review grouped 204 into 90 candidate groups and left 92 without a confirmed match. My final choices retained 96 collage photos and 23 making-of photos, plus all 92 loose items: 211 retained, 85 designated for removal. The checklist and selection were completed, and the script was generated. At the time of writing, I had not yet run the cleanup on Windows. WHY IT HELPED The key was separating three jobs: finding likely matches, deciding what matters, and applying those decisions to files. “The same artwork” does not necessarily mean “an unnecessary photo”. A visual checklist let me make those distinctions without manually tracking filenames. STARTER PROMPT “I have photos of the same artwork taken from different angles and against different backgrounds. Find candidate matches using details within the artwork, and distinguish duplicates from details, changed versions and making-of photos. Create a standalone HTML review page with original filenames, a Keep checkbox and a category dropdown for each candidate. Allow multiple retained photos per category. Flag empty groups and selected photos with no category. Preserve unmatched images. Let me export my choices as JSON. After I return the selection, generate a script that validates the original filenames, sorts retained files into the chosen folders and moves only rejected files to the Recycle Bin after showing the target folder and counts. Do not choose or delete files on my behalf."

We used ChatGPT to make renting out our house in France for the first time far less overwhelming. By the end of the summer, we had hosted four families. Although the whole process was a lot of work, creating one master file with useful facts about the house was a major time-saver. It included everything from Wi-Fi and coffeemaker instructions to lighting quirks and bin days. From that document, AI built a room-by-room preparation checklist, drafted and translated a house guide in French and English, wrote separate listings for Airbnb and a local rental site, and created guest messages ranging from booking confirmations to check-in instructions. For pricing, we spoke with a local agent. AI’s final task was to flag the French administrative, tax, registration, and insurance details that we needed to sort out ourselves. Step-by-step: 1. We created one master file containing useful facts and practical details about the house, including Wi-Fi, coffeemaker instructions, lighting quirks, and bin days. 2. We used the file to have AI create a room-by-room preparation checklist. 3. We asked AI to draft and translate a house guide in French and English. 4. We had AI write separate rental listings for Airbnb and a local rental site. 5. We used AI to create guest messages, including booking confirmations and check-in instructions. 6. We met with a local agent for advice on pricing. 7. We asked AI to flag the French administrative, tax, registration, and insurance details we needed to handle ourselves. 8. By the end of the summer, we had hosted four families.

My mom and I love trying new recipes together, but our best dishes rarely turn out exactly like the original recipe. She adds a little more garlic, I suggest a different spice, and by the time we sit down to eat, neither of us remembers what we changed. 😂 I started using ChatGPT as our cooking journal. After we make something, I send it a photo of the dish and a quick voice note about what we used, what we changed, and what we’d do differently next time. ChatGPT turns those notes into a recipe we can make again while preserving our comments and the story behind the meal. Now, when we’re deciding what to cook, I can ask for a favorite we haven’t made in a while, a recipe that uses what’s in the fridge, or a shopping list for our next cooking day. It’s becoming a collection of our recipes and the time we’ve spent making them together. ❤️ Step-by-step: 1. I created one place to keep our recipes, with space for ingredients, steps, photos, ratings, and notes. 2. Each time my mom and I cook, I take a photo and record a short voice note about the changes we made. 3. I ask ChatGPT to turn our notes into a clear recipe and flag any measurements we forgot to record. 4. I review the recipe with my mom, fill in the missing details, and save the version we actually made. 5. We add what we liked, what we’d change, and any memories from that cooking day. 6. When we want to cook again, I ask ChatGPT to find a recipe, adapt it to the ingredients we have, or make a shopping list.

Build a Self-Improving AI Meeting Protocol for Teams This workflow was inspired by a question Brooke Benson posted in the Rundown Hub about meeting transcripts that miss action items or assign them to the wrong person. That felt familiar because I used to take meeting minutes as a management assistant. I often had to ask: Who said this? Was it a decision or only a suggestion? Who owns this action? Was the deadline confirmed? As a human note-taker, I could ask the people in the room and summarize while listening. A speaker might say: “Maybe Friday, but that depends on Marc.” My notes might become: “Friday is tentative and depends on Marc.” A transcriber captures more, but it also captures the verbal spaghetti. So the problem is not only transcription quality. It is ambiguity. Instead of only asking AI to interpret a messy transcript afterwards, what if the meeting itself produced clearer signals? The system has four layers: Step-by-step: 1. Meeting grammar Speaking habits that clarify speakers, decisions, actions, ownership and uncertainty. 2. Team information Context about names, roles, responsibilities, terminology and decision scope. 3. Output template A fixed structure for the meeting report. 4. Feedback loop AI compares corrections with its previous output and suggests improvements. The meeting grammar should stay lightweight. At the start, each participant states their name and role. Name the next speaker when possible: “Marc, go ahead.” “Sofie, what do you think?” Unclear contributions can be restated: “So Marc, Friday is possible only if the technical review is complete. Correct?” Mark proposals, decisions and actions differently: Proposal: “I suggest we move the launch to Friday.” Decision: “We are moving the launch to Friday.” Action: “Marc will update the schedule by Wednesday.” Tentative action: “Marc may update it, pending confirmation.” At transition points, repeat what was agreed: “The decision is Friday.” “Marc owns the schedule update.” “The deadline is Wednesday.” Uncertainty should also be explicit: “Owner to confirm.” “Deadline is provisional.” “This is a proposal, not a decision.” The AI should receive these rules directly: - Treat explicit decision language as confirmed. - Do not assign an owner unless ownership is clear. - Label tentative deadlines as tentative. - Flag uncertain speakers instead of guessing. - Prefer later explicit summaries over earlier ambiguous wording. The AI should also receive team context: name, role, responsibilities, decision authority, terminology and communication patterns. Example: Pieter Vermeulen Operations Usually responsible for scheduling and logistics. Often uses tentative language for proposals. Only assign ownership when he explicitly confirms it. These notes should stay transparent and editable. People should be able to review, change or reject notes about their own communication patterns. The report should use a fixed structure: Meeting title Date Participants Main topics Decisions Action items Owner Deadline Status Open questions Risks or dependencies Items requiring confirmation TL;DR This can be built into a shared internal assistant. It receives the meeting grammar, team information, transcript and output template. It should be conservative about certainty: Owner unclear → “Owner to confirm” Suggested deadline → “Tentative deadline” Unknown speaker → “Speaker unclear” Discussed proposal → “Proposal discussed, not confirmed” A human still reviews speaker attribution, decisions, owners, deadlines and confirmed items. Then the corrected report is fed back to the AI: “Which errors came from unclear meeting signals? Which came from missing team context? Which came from your interpretation? What should be improved?” The AI can suggest updates to the meeting grammar or team information. Example: Error: Several people discussed a task, but nobody clearly accepted ownership. Suggested grammar update: “When assigning an action, confirm owner and deadline in one sentence.” Or: Observed pattern: “Pieter often says ‘we should’ when proposing something.” Suggested profile update: “Treat ‘we should’ as a proposal unless explicitly confirmed.” Profile changes should be reviewed before they are stored. The workflow: meeting → transcript → AI report → human correction → error analysis → grammar/team-context update → review → next meeting Over time, fewer errors should need correction because the system becomes easier to interpret. The division of labor is simple: The transcriber captures everything. Humans resolve meaning and ambiguity. AI structures, summarizes and detects patterns. AI output quality depends not only on the prompt, but on the signals the AI receives. Sometimes the best improvement is to reduce ambiguity before it reaches the model.

I’m pregnant with my second child. For my first, we had a doula, so my husband and I didn’t spend much time learning about labor positions or what can help during labor because we knew she would guide us. This time, we don’t have a doula, and we didn’t want to spend a lot of money on an online course or take the time to attend an in-person one. I asked ChatGPT to scour free resources from leading experts and create a mini-course we could work through, along with a cheat sheet for my husband to use during labor. It saved me hours of research and gave us an incredibly useful resource. Step-by-step: 1. I explained that I’m pregnant with my second child and that we had relied on a doula during my first labor. 2. I identified the information we needed to learn, including labor positions and what can help during labor. 3. I asked ChatGPT to scour free resources from leading experts and use them to develop a mini-course. 4. I also asked it to create a cheat sheet for my husband to use during labor. 5. We used the mini-course and cheat sheet as a more affordable and convenient alternative to an online or in-person course.

Sometimes a playlist disappears before you realise how much you depended on it. That happened to a meditation playlist I used constantly for months. Then Spotify removed it, and I discovered an inconvenient detail: I barely knew the track or artist names. I remembered the music and what it did for me, but I could not reliably search for it. The reconstruction began accidentally. While analysing my Spotify listening history for another purpose, AI noticed that I had played roughly the same fifty tracks again and again for about four months. Suddenly, I did not need to remember the missing playlist. My listening history had remembered it for me. A playlist can leave a behavioural fingerprint even when its name and contents are gone. Look for repetitive periods, recurring groups of tracks, similar sequences, and songs that appear together for several months before disappearing around the same time. Step-by-step: 1. I inspected my historical Spotify listening data instead of relying only on which songs I could remember. 2. I used unusual repetition to identify the likely time window. In my case, a four-month cluster helped me recognise the missing meditation playlist, even though I did not know the exact dates beforehand. 3. I built a broad candidate pool of tracks played frequently during that period, recording titles, artists, play counts, dates, listening duration, and nearby tracks. 4. I looked for tracks that repeatedly occurred in the same sessions, on the same days, or in similar sequences. Tracks that travelled together were stronger evidence than songs that were merely popular individually. 5. I compared listening outside the suspected period. A song played throughout several years might be a general favourite, while one that appeared repeatedly within the cluster and rarely elsewhere was a stronger candidate. 6. I used timestamps to recover possible order, including tracks that usually followed each other or appeared near the beginning or end of sessions. Because shuffle may obscure the original order, I treated these smaller sequences as clues rather than proof. 7. I showed the candidate tracks to the person, including names, artists, and, where useful, album art or audio previews. I asked whether each track felt familiar and belonged to the playlist. 8. I relied on recognition rather than recall. Someone may be unable to name a single song but still recognise dozens when presented with them. This is especially useful for instrumental music, mantras, classical works, or unfamiliar names, because remembering the sound does not require remembering its spelling. 9. I ranked candidates as highly likely, likely, possible, or uncertain using repetition, co-occurrence, timing, listening elsewhere, and human confirmation. I did not treat every recovered track as equally certain. 10. I created a provisional playlist from the strongest candidates and listened to it. A list can look convincing in a spreadsheet but feel wrong when played; listening may reveal an unrelated song, a missing transition, or immediate recognition. 11. I used confirmed tracks as anchors and checked which uncertain candidates repeatedly appeared beside them. Data suggested candidates, recognition confirmed anchors, and those anchors improved the next search. 12. I recorded why the playlist mattered, when it was used, and whether its order mattered. Mine was a meditation playlist, so recovering that musical environment mattered even if the exact original list remained uncertain. 13. I saved an external record containing the playlist name, track titles, artists, albums, links or identifiers, reconstruction date, and uncertainty or contextual notes. I kept the listening history, candidate analysis, and confirmed playlist separately so I could revise the result without losing the evidence. The workflow was: analyse listening history → find repeated clusters → locate the time window → collect candidates → compare co-occurrence and sequence → remove unrelated tracks → confirm through recognition → rebuild and listen → refine → save externally. The deeper principle is that humans often remember experiences better than metadata. I remembered that the playlist existed, what it did, and how constantly I played it. I did not remember what most of it was called. The platform had lost the collection, but the listening history still contained its shadow. One observation made it searchable again: > “Hey. For about four months, you were basically listening to the same fifty songs.” 😅🎧

I built GlowNextDoor (glownextdoor.com), a map-based website for discovering nearby hair salons, barbers, nail studios, lash specialists, and other beauty services. I used ChatGPT/Codex and Claude to develop the idea, compare designs, and refine the experience. I then built and published the website with Base44. I connected Google Maps for live business listings and added location detection, distance and rating filters, reviews, directions, and links to salons’ existing booking systems. Through repeated testing on desktop and mobile, I improved the layout, added favorites without requiring a login, created realistic animated category icons, and included an option to add the website to a phone’s home screen. Finally, I connected a custom domain through Blacknight and configured Google Maps usage limits to control costs. My workflow was to describe each feature, review the AI-generated result, test it in the browser, and iterate before publishing. Step-by-step: 1. I described each GlowNextDoor feature to ChatGPT/Codex and Claude while developing the idea and comparing design options. 2. I built and published the website with Base44. 3. I connected Google Maps for live business listings and added location detection, distance and rating filters, reviews, directions, and links to existing booking systems. 4. I tested the website repeatedly on desktop and mobile, then refined the layout and added favorites without requiring users to log in. 5. I created realistic animated category icons and added an option to install the website on a phone’s home screen. 6. I connected the custom domain through Blacknight and configured Google Maps usage limits to control costs. 7. I reviewed each AI-generated result in the browser, iterated on it, and published the updated version.

I use ChatGPT to support a hobby that combines research, negotiation, history, craftsmanship, and family legacy: collecting mechanical watches. The workflow usually begins when I discover a watch that interests me. Rather than simply asking whether it is a good watch, I use ChatGPT as a research analyst. We investigate the exact reference, movement, production history, complications, materials, rarity, manufacturer history, comparable watches, secondary-market pricing, previous sales, and any known weaknesses or servicing concerns. With unusual independent watches, this can become surprisingly deep research. The goal is to answer two separate questions: Is the watch genuinely interesting? And is this particular example worth buying at this price? If I decide to pursue a watch, ChatGPT shifts into the role of negotiation adviser. I share dealer listings, asking prices, trade proposals, emails or text messages, previous offers, comparable sales, and my own walk-away price. We discuss likely dealer economics, negotiating leverage, possible counteroffers, and how aggressively or patiently I should approach the transaction. ChatGPT also helps draft correspondence, but the final decision remains mine. I find the greatest value in having an analytical partner that remembers the research and can challenge my enthusiasm before I spend money. After acquiring a watch, I create an entry in a private document I call my Horological Codex. Each entry includes the technical specifications and historical information, along with why I chose that particular watch, how I acquired it, its price, its appraised value, what was happening in my life at the time, and why it deserves a place in the collection. One early watch commemorates an educational milestone. Another is a one-of-one piece commissioned directly with an independent watchmaker. Other watches connect to family events, travel, my cars, personal interests, or particular periods of my life. The Codex preserves those stories and memories alongside the watches themselves. My original Codex eventually became a large, 70-page formatted document, and maintaining it manually became cumbersome as watches entered and left my collection. My next version will separate the structured information from the presentation layer: I will maintain a master record for each watch, then use AI to generate or update the polished Codex from that underlying data. That way, the collection can evolve without requiring me to rebuild an entire book every time something changes. I keep the full Codex private because it contains family and financial information, but the system itself has become a meaningful way to preserve the history behind the collection. Step-by-step: 1. I identify a watch that interests me and describe the exact reference and available listing information to ChatGPT. 2. I research the watch’s movement, production history, complications, materials, rarity, manufacturer, comparable watches, secondary-market pricing, previous sales, and known weaknesses or servicing concerns. 3. I evaluate both whether the watch is genuinely interesting and whether the specific example is worth buying at the asking price. 4. If I decide to pursue it, I share the dealer’s listing, asking price, trade proposals, correspondence, previous offers, comparable sales, and my walk-away price with ChatGPT. 5. I use that information to discuss dealer economics, negotiating leverage, counteroffers, and the right negotiation approach, then make the final decision myself. 6. After acquiring the watch, I record its technical details, history, acquisition story, price, appraised value, personal significance, and place in the collection in the Horological Codex. 7. I maintain a master record for each watch so AI can eventually generate or update the polished Codex without requiring me to rebuild the entire 70-page document whenever the collection changes.

I built a repeatable, human-directed AI workflow for turning an original emotion, memory, or story into a finished WazWorld song, complete with cover artwork and release content. It addresses one of the biggest problems with AI music: a simple prompt can produce something technically impressive but generic, overproduced, or disconnected from the creator’s real intention. The workflow begins with a human trigger—an experience, relationship, place, mood, or musical idea that I genuinely want to express. WazWorld generally moves between dark alternative/electronic music and California coastal country-rock. Step-by-step: 1. I create a detailed artistic brief describing the song’s emotional core, story, genre, energy, vocal character, instrumentation, arrangement, dynamics, and intended listener experience. 2. I work with ChatGPT to develop and challenge the concept, write and rewrite lyrics, remove clichés, and design the full arrangement. This includes the intro, verses, choruses, instrumental passages, transitions, musical peaks, and outro. ChatGPT also helps translate my direction into precise production language and exclusions that Suno can understand. 3. I generate versions in Suno, treating each result as a demo rather than a finished song. I evaluate the vocal delivery, lyrics, bass, guitars, synths, drums, tempo, arrangement, and emotional impact. Then I make targeted prompt changes and generate new versions. A song may go through dozens of iterations before it sounds the way I originally heard it in my head. 4. After selecting the final music, I use ChatGPT and AI image generation to develop cover artwork that matches the song’s emotional identity. I adapt the artwork for streaming, YouTube, Instagram, Stories, and Shorts, then create the metadata, descriptions, captions, and promotional material needed for release. 5. I distribute the finished music through services such as DistroKid and publish it across streaming and social platforms. The final result is not a one-click AI song. AI provides creative and production tools, but I direct every major decision—from the original emotion and lyrics to the arrangement, instrumentation, vocals, artwork, and release strategy. Someone can recreate this workflow by starting with a clear human idea, documenting the desired sound, generating multiple versions, evaluating each one like a producer, and iterating until the finished work communicates the original intention.

Tell AI the Real Goal, Not Just the Scorecard THE PROBLEM When we give AI a task, we often describe success through measurable criteria: be fast, minimize errors, use fewer resources, produce a certain format, reach a quality score, or complete a list of steps. Those criteria are useful, but they are usually not the actual goal. A high score matters because it is supposed to indicate that the AI is doing something useful. Efficiency matters because we want to achieve something without wasting resources. A specific layout matters because someone needs to use the result afterwards. If the proxy becomes more important than the purpose behind it, the AI can technically satisfy the instructions while missing what we actually wanted. So I started making the hierarchy explicit. THE WORKFLOW Before a substantial task, I explain four things: Step-by-step: 1. The real goal What am I ultimately trying to accomplish? 2. Why that goal matters What function should the result serve in the real world? 3. The success criteria What signals, scores, constraints or output requirements help us judge whether we are getting there? 4. The important distinction Those criteria are indicators of success, not the goal themselves. Then, before execution, I usually ask for a short non-technical plan in plain language. Not code. Not internal terminology. Not a wall of implementation detail. I want the AI to explain: - what it thinks I am trying to achieve - what steps it plans to take - in what order - what it expects each step to accomplish - where it sees possible problems or ambiguity - what the final result should look like - where it will show me intermediate results before continuing That last point matters. For larger tasks, I do not want one giant jump from instruction to finished output. I want the AI to build in intermediate checkpoints with actual results. That can mean: - showing the first batch before processing the rest - giving a sample classification before applying it to hundreds of items - sharing an early pattern it found before building the full analysis around it - showing the structure of a document before filling every section - reporting that a planned step produced an unexpected result before silently adapting everything downstream The checkpoint should contain something useful enough to evaluate. Not just: «Step 2 completed.» But rather: «I processed the first 50 items. Most fit the categories we expected, but 12% fall into a pattern we did not account for. Here are three examples and how I suggest handling them.» That lets me see whether the task is still heading toward the actual goal. For example, my instruction might be: «The real goal is X. We care about Y because it helps achieve X. Z is a useful metric, but do not optimize Z at the expense of X. Before executing, explain in non-technical language how you plan to approach the task, step by step. Build useful intermediate results into the plan so I can inspect the direction before too much work depends on it. Flag anything that seems likely to satisfy the metric while undermining the actual purpose.» I can then say: «Yes, that is what I mean.» Or: «No, step 3 is where you are misunderstanding me.» And later: «This first batch looks right. Continue.» Or: «Stop here. The pattern you found changes how I want the rest handled.» Correcting a five-line plan or an early sample is much cheaper than correcting an entire finished workflow, analysis or file operation. WHY I LIKE IT This turns the interaction from: instruction → execution → correction into: purpose → shared understanding → visible plan → intermediate results → adjustment → execution It also helps me learn how the AI works. I do not need to understand every technical mechanism underneath it, but I do want a usable mental model of how it approaches problems. Over time, that makes collaboration easier because I get better at giving instructions, spotting misunderstandings early and knowing where extra context will matter. Intermediate results also make autonomy safer. The AI does not need permission for every tiny action, but it should avoid disappearing into a long chain of dependent decisions when an early misunderstanding could invalidate everything that follows. This can reduce unnecessary work, wasted compute and repeated corrections. The AI can still work independently once the direction is clear. The point is not to micromanage the process. The point is to make sure we are optimizing the right thing, travelling by a route we both understand, and checking occasionally that we are still on that route. A metric is a thermometer. The goal is to make the room warm, not merely to make the thermometer say 21°C.