Issue #8: Teach It A Trick It Keeps

New here? If this landed in spam or promotions, drag it to your inbox and mark it "not junk" so you don't miss next week. Takes five seconds and it genuinely helps.

Last week I gave Claude hands so it could fetch my own stuff for me. This week I'll teach it a trick it actually keeps, so you can stop repeating yourself.

Here's the habit that finally wore me down. Every time I wanted something done my particular way, I had to spell it out from scratch. I'd open a fresh chat and type the same setup as yesterday: keep it short, lead with the answer, skip the hype, use these sections. The next day, I'd open another fresh chat and give the whole speech again, word for word, like a man arguing with his own echo.

It's like hiring a brilliant temp every morning and spending twenty minutes re-training them on how you take your coffee, because they walked in having forgotten everything you told them yesterday.

The part that stung: I was blaming Claude for not remembering, when I'd never given it a way to remember.

So I stopped re-explaining and started saving. That's the whole move this week. It's called a skill, and it's exactly what it sounds like: a recipe you teach Claude once, in your own words, so you never have to teach it again. The rules, the format, the voice, written down and kept. Then instead of re-explaining, you just say "do the thing," and it does it your way, every time.

You spend the effort once, and it pays you back every day after. Let me show you the doable version first, then the fancy one.

Use case: Turning one thing you always re-explain into a recipe you save once and reuse forever

Pick the one recurring task that makes you sigh. Summarizing your meeting notes. Drafting emails in your voice. Planning your week. Whatever you keep re-explaining. Then write out your way of doing it, once, like this:

That last line does two jobs. It shows you anything you left out, and it hands you back a cleaned-up recipe you can paste straight into a note. That saved copy is the thing you reuse. Claude doesn't carry it between separate chats on its own yet, so you keep the master, and you paste it back in whenever you start fresh.

Now here's the beat almost everybody skips: reuse it and tweak it. Use it twice this week. When something bugs you about the result, don't start over. Just add one line to the recipe: "also, always do X." A skill isn't carved in stone. It gets sharper every time you run it, like a real recipe you scribble notes in the margin of.

Here's the part that surprised me: the official version of a skill is easier than the saved-prompt version, and you don't build anything by hand.

You just ask Claude, in plain English, to turn your recipe into a skill and give it a name. It writes the whole thing up for you and helps you save it. From then on, you have two ways to use it. You can start your task and let Claude reach for the skill on its own when it fits. Or you can call it up on purpose: type a slash, /, start typing the name, and pick it from the list. Either way, you never paste the recipe again.

It lives in your settings, it works on the free plan, and you turn it on once. That's the whole setup.

Here's mine, so it's not abstract.

I have a real, running skill called my Daily Market Brief. I taught it to Claude once, and I mean really taught it. Who it's for: me, a finance guy who wants situational awareness walking into the day, not a trader's buy list. The hard rule: 750 words, never a word more, cut until it fits. The structure: bottom line first, then a dashboard of the numbers, then the macro picture, then geopolitics, then the specific corners of the market I actually care about. The research routine: pull fresh numbers every time, never guess. Even the voice: lead with the answer, no hype words, no fluff.

I wrote all of that down one time. One time. Now I never re-explain any of it. I just call up the skill, and it runs exactly to my spec. I never again have to say "keep it to 750 words," because 750 words is baked into who this skill is.

The one thing that costs a bit more is making it run on its own, on a schedule, without me even there to ask. That's the real next step, and it's exactly where we're headed next week.

Here's your tiny thing for today, and it's free.

Think of the one task you've re-explained to Claude the most. Just one. Write your recipe for it in a note on your phone: the rules, the format, the voice, the way you want it. Keep it short, four or five lines is plenty. Save it somewhere you'll find it.

Then use it. Paste it at the top of a chat and run your task. Then do it again later this week. Twice. That's the assignment.

The first time, it saves you the re-explaining. The second time is when it clicks, because you'll feel the thing you didn't have to type again. That little "oh, I already told it this" is what a skill is for, and you just built one.

If you have a Project from an earlier issue, even easier: drop your recipe into that Project's custom instructions, and now every chat in there already knows the drill.

I'll go first, like always.

You've heard me mention that 7am market brief a few times now. Here's the part I haven't told you: the reason it's the same sharp thing every single morning is that it's a skill, not a chat.

Early on, I was rebuilding it by hand. I'd open Claude and re-type my whole speech: keep it tight, lead with the bottom line, give me the numbers before the story, don't you dare give me a hype paragraph, and please, 750 words, no more. Then the next day I'd type it all again. I was the recipe, and I had to recite myself from memory daily.

So I sat down and wrote the recipe out properly, one time. The reader it's for, the 750-word cap, the exact order of the sections, the research it has to do, the voice it has to hold. Then I saved it as a skill.

I have not re-explained a single piece of it since. I don't tell it the word count. I don't tell it the structure. I don't remind it to lead with the answer. It already knows, because "knowing all that" is what the skill is. I taught it my way once, and it kept it.

That's the feeling I want to hand you.

So here's your hand-off, and it's one thing.

Take the one task you always re-explain, write your recipe for it once, save it, and reuse it twice this week. Don't make it perfect. Make it saved. Feel the difference between explaining and just running it.

Next week we take that recipe and put it on a timer. You've got a move Claude keeps. Next issue, Schedules, where your recipe runs on its own, at the hour you pick, without you being there to press go. A recipe is powerful. A recipe that runs while you sleep is a different life.

I still owe you the big one, too. Not what any of this does, but why it matters, and why I keep showing up in your inbox to hand you these. I haven't forgotten it. I'm building toward it on purpose. It's coming.

Until then.

Stop overthinking it.

Just get started.

JGS

P.S. Hit reply and tell me the one task you're finally turning into a recipe. The thing you're sick of re-explaining. I read every one, and the best of them tend to show up in a future issue.