Put your week on autopilot with Claude

How it works 🧠

Every automation below is a note plus a timer, built on one of three surfaces (plus a bonus):

Three small things before you start:

1. 💳 You need a paid plan. Cloud routines need a paid Claude plan (Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise) with Claude Code on the web enabled, and they are in research preview, so small details may shift
2. 🐙 Point it at a repo. Routines ask for a GitHub repository to work in; point them at a small private notes repo, because the real work here happens through the connectors
3. 👀 Every run is readable. Every routine run is saved as a session at claude.ai/code, so you can always open one and read exactly what Claude did

Mornings: wake up to a sorted inbox and a plan 🌅

1. Inbox triage · runs daily at 7am

• ✨ What you get: you open Gmail to three tidy lists and ready-made reply drafts, so you review and hit send instead of wading
• ⚙️ Built with: a cloud routine plus the Gmail connector
• ⏱ Setup: about 10 minutes

Type /schedule in Claude Code, ask for a daily 7am routine, and paste this as the instructions:

Read the unread email in my Gmail inbox from the last 24 hours. Sort it into three lists: urgent (needs me today), reply (needs an answer this week), and read later (no action needed). For each email on the reply list, write a reply in my tone and save it as a Gmail draft on that thread. Do not send anything. Then create one more Gmail draft titled "Inbox brief" containing the three lists, urgent first, one line per email: sender, subject, and what they want from me.

2. Morning brief · runs every morning

• ✨ What you get: your meetings, open tasks, and the one thing that matters most, waiting before you even sit down
• ⚙️ Built with: a cloud routine plus the Google Calendar and Gmail connectors
• ⏱ Setup: about 10 minutes

Build my brief for today. Read my Google Calendar for today's meetings. Read my priorities list here: [link to your priorities doc or page]. Write a brief under 200 words: today's meetings in order with times, my top three open tasks, and the one thing that matters most today with a single line on why. Save it as a Gmail draft titled "Morning brief" so it is waiting when I sit down.

Meetings: walk in prepped, every single time 🤝

3. Meeting briefs · runs Sunday night

• ✨ What you get: a one-pager per meeting for the week ahead: who you are seeing, what you last discussed, what is still open
• ⚙️ Built with: a cloud routine plus the Google Calendar, Gmail, and Google Drive connectors
• ⏱ Setup: about 10 minutes

Read my Google Calendar for the coming week, Monday to Friday. For every meeting with other attendees, write a one-page brief: who I am meeting, their role and company, what we last discussed (search my Gmail for recent threads with each attendee), anything still open or promised, and one suggested talking point. Combine all the briefs into a single doc called "Meeting briefs, week of [date]" in my Google Drive, ordered by day.

4. People research · runs every weekday morning

• ✨ What you get: a stranger on the calendar stops being a stranger before the call starts
• ⚙️ Built with: a cloud routine plus the Google Calendar and Gmail connectors, with web access turned on
• ⏱ Setup: about 15 minutes

Check my Google Calendar for today and tomorrow. Find any attendee I have not met before (no earlier events or Gmail threads with them). Research each one on the web: current role, company, what the company does, and one genuine common thread I could open the conversation with. Write two or three sentences per person, note which meeting they belong to, and save it all as a Gmail draft titled "New faces". If there is no one new, do nothing.

Boring admin: the chores you keep putting off, gone 🧾

5. File cleanup · runs Friday at 5pm

• ✨ What you get: a Downloads folder sorted by type, anything untouched for 60 days archived, storage back with zero effort
• ⚙️ Built with: a Desktop scheduled task, because it needs your local files (cloud routines cannot see your machine)
• ⏱ Setup: about 10 minutes

In the Claude Code Desktop app: Routines, New routine, choose Local, pick a weekly Friday 5pm schedule, and paste this as the instructions:

Tidy my Downloads folder. Create subfolders by type if they do not exist (images, screenshots, PDFs, docs, installers, everything else) and move each file into the right one. Move anything untouched for more than 60 days into Downloads/Archive, sorted into folders by month. Never delete anything and never touch folders outside Downloads. Finish with a two-line report: how many files you moved and how much space Archive now holds.

6. Expense organizer · runs the 1st of the month

• ✨ What you get: a month of receipts turned into a tidy spreadsheet: vendor, date, amount, category, total
• ⚙️ Built with: a Desktop scheduled task (or a cloud routine plus the Google Drive connector if your receipts live in Drive)
• ⏱ Setup: about 10 minutes

Open my receipts folder at [path to your receipts folder]. Read every receipt added since the 1st of last month (PDFs and images) and pull out the vendor, date, amount, and a sensible category: software, travel, meals, equipment, or other. Write them as rows into expenses/[year]-[month].csv with a total per category at the bottom. If a receipt is unreadable, list it at the end under "check by hand" instead of guessing.

End of day: clock off with nothing slipping 🌙

7. Work log · runs daily at 6pm

• ✨ What you get: what got done, what is in progress, what is first tomorrow; your standup update writes itself
• ⚙️ Built with: a Desktop scheduled task, plus an optional hook that collects raw material all day
• ⏱ Setup: about 15 minutes

Write my end-of-day work log. Look at today's activity on this machine: git commits across my project folders, files created or edited today, and my notes file at [path if you keep one]. Write three short lists: done, in progress, and first thing tomorrow. Be specific and honest, no filler. Save it as work-log/[date].md and show me the three lists so I can paste them straight into standup.

The optional power-up: a hook. Hooks are tiny scripts Claude Code fires automatically at set moments, and the SessionEnd event fires every time a session wraps. This one appends a timestamped line to a raw log all day, which gives the 6pm task better material. Add it to ~/.claude/settings.json, then list ~/work-log-raw.txt as one of the sources in the prompt above:

{
  "hooks": {
    "SessionEnd": [
      {
        "hooks": [
          {
            "type": "command",
            "command": "echo \"$(date '+%a %H:%M') finished a Claude Code session in $(basename \"$PWD\")\" >> ~/work-log-raw.txt"
          }
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}

8. Thread digest · runs daily

• ✨ What you get: long Slack threads compressed into decisions and action items; catching up takes two minutes, not twenty
• ⚙️ Built with: a cloud routine plus the Slack connector
• ⏱ Setup: about 10 minutes

Read my key Slack channels: [list 3 to 5 channel names]. Find threads from the last 24 hours that run longer than 10 messages or that mention me. For each one, write three lines: what it is about, what was decided, and the action items with the owner's name next to each. Skip social chatter completely. Send the digest to me as one Slack direct message, most important thread first. If nothing qualifies, send nothing.

Content: Sunday Claude drafts, Monday you post ✍️

9. Content repurposing · runs Sunday at 4pm

• ✨ What you get: one long piece becomes a LinkedIn post, an X thread, and three short-video scripts, each rewritten for its platform
• ⚙️ Built with: a cloud routine plus the Google Drive connector
• ⏱ Setup: about 10 minutes

Open my Google Drive folder [your drafts folder] and find the newest long piece from the last 7 days (a blog post, newsletter issue, or video script). Rewrite it three ways: a LinkedIn post under 200 words with a strong first line, an X thread of 5 to 8 posts, and three 30-second short-video scripts in spoken language, each built on one idea from the piece. Save everything as one new doc called "[piece title], repurposed" in the same folder. Do not post anything anywhere.

10. Newsletter draft · runs Sunday morning

• ✨ What you get: a full first draft of your issue pulled from your own week; you review it and hit send
• ⚙️ Built with: a cloud routine plus the Google Drive connector
• ⏱ Setup: about 10 minutes

Draft this week's issue of my newsletter. Sources: my work log and notes in [folder or doc] from the last 7 days, plus my two most recent issues in [issues folder] so you match my tone. Structure: one main lesson from my week, three short recommendations (tools, links, or ideas) with one line each, and a warm one-line sign-off. Save it as a doc called "Issue draft, [date]" in [issues folder]. I will review it, paste it into my newsletter tool, and hit send myself.

The weekend setup plan 🗓

Saturday: your days.

1. 🔌 Connect Gmail and Google Calendar on claude.ai (Settings, then Connectors), about 10 minutes
2. ⏰ Set up the morning pair with /schedule: inbox triage (1) at 7am and the morning brief (2)
3. 💻 Install the Claude Code Desktop app and add file cleanup (5) as your first local task
4. 🧾 Add the expense organizer (6) and ask Claude to set the first-of-the-month schedule
5. 🌙 Add the work log (7), then hit Run now on each new task once and approve the permission prompts while you watch

Sunday: your weeks.

1. 🔗 Connect Google Drive and Slack on claude.ai the same way
2. 🤝 Set up meeting briefs (3) for Sunday nights and people research (4) for weekday mornings
3. 💬 Set up the thread digest (8) and send yourself the first one to check the tone
4. ✍️ Set up content repurposing (9) for Sunday 4pm and the newsletter draft (10) for Sunday morning
5. 👀 Book 15 minutes next Saturday to read the week's outputs and tighten any prompt that missed

Honest caveats 🚦

• 🔒 Keep everything draft-only at first: every prompt in this guide sorts, drafts, or summarizes, and nothing sends, posts, or deletes. Let it earn your trust before you loosen that
• 👀 Check the outputs every day for the first week: when something is off, fix the prompt, not the output. The prompt is the automation, so edit it like one
• 🔌 Trim connectors per routine: cloud routines run with no permission prompts, so when you create one, remove every connector it does not need (they are all included by default)
• 🖐 Start Desktop tasks in Ask mode: run each one manually the first time, watch the permission prompts, and approve only what it genuinely needs; future runs then auto-approve the same tools
• 💻 Desktop tasks only fire while the app is open and your computer is awake: a missed run catches up once when it wakes, so a 5pm task might run at 9pm. Turn on Keep computer awake in the app settings if the timing matters
• ⏳ Runs start a few minutes after the scheduled time by design (both surfaces stagger traffic), so never build anything that needs to-the-minute precision
• 💸 Routine runs draw down your plan usage like normal sessions, and there is a daily cap on routine runs; you can see both at claude.ai/settings/usage

The links 🔗

• ⏰ Routines, the scheduled cloud agents: code.claude.com/docs/en/routines
• 💻 Desktop scheduled tasks: code.claude.com/docs/en/desktop-scheduled-tasks
• 🗓 All three scheduling options compared: code.claude.com/docs/en/scheduled-tasks
• 🔌 Connecting your tools with MCP: code.claude.com/docs/en/mcp
• 🪝 Hooks: code.claude.com/docs/en/hooks-guide
• 🧩 The connector directory: claude.ai/directory