tab one. email. tab two. calendar. tab three. slack. tab four. email again because i already forgot what was in there.

half an hour later my coffee's cold and i still couldn't tell you what actually mattered.

so i fixed it. i built a system that reads all of it for me and spits out one clean summary before my alarm even goes off.

today i'm handing you the whole thing. the free way and the automatic way. pick whichever fits.

let's go.

3 numbers worth knowing this week.

anthropic is now pulling in $19 billion a year. up from $9 billion three months ago. over 500 companies pay them more than $1 million a year. eight of the fortune 10 use claude. this thing isn't a toy anymore.

oracle is planning to cut up to 30,000 jobs. not because AI replaced those people. because they need $8 to $10 billion in cash to build AI data centers. they're firing humans to buy GPUs. block (the company behind cash app) cut 40% of its team too. their CEO said those roles were made unnecessary by AI tools.

claude cowork just got dispatch. you can text your computer from your phone and it does the work while you're gone. shipped march 17. now available on the $20/month pro plan. more on this in today's build.

here's what this does.

you wake up. you check one thing. it tells you every meeting on your calendar, the emails that actually need a response, and what your team said in slack while you slept.

no scrolling. no tabs. no "wait what was that one email."

one look. you know your day.

i'm going to show you two versions. the free one you can do right now. the paid one that does it for you automatically every morning.

what you need: a free claude account at claude.ai. that's it.

time to set up: about 5 minutes.

step 1. grab your stuff.

open three tabs. your email. your calendar. your slack (or teams, or whatever your team uses).

copy the subject lines of your last 15 unread emails. just the subject lines. don't read them.

copy your calendar events for today and tomorrow. the title, time, and who's in the meeting.

copy the last 10 messages from your most active slack channel. just paste the text.

step 2. paste it all into claude.

go to claude.ai. paste everything you just copied. then paste this prompt right after it:

step 3. read your briefing.

claude gives you a clean summary. your whole morning in one screen. the stuff that matters is at the top. the stuff that doesn't is at the bottom.

that's it. 5 minutes. you now know more about your day than most people know after an hour of inbox diving.

do this for one week. just copy paste every morning. you'll never go back to the old way.

okay so level 1 works great. but the copy pasting every morning gets old. what if it just happened automatically?

that's what claude cowork does.

cowork is a feature inside the claude desktop app. instead of chatting back and forth, you give claude access to a folder on your computer and it does the work for you. think of it like hiring an assistant who shows up every morning, reads everything, and leaves you a one page summary on your desk.

what you need:

is it worth $20? if this saves you 30 minutes a day, that's 10 hours a month. 10 hours you're not scrolling through tabs wondering what matters. you decide if that's worth it.

step 1. download the desktop app and open cowork.

open the claude desktop app. at the top you'll see three tabs. chat, cowork, and code. click cowork.

step 2. connect your apps.

go to customize, then connectors. connect gmail, google calendar, and slack. click connect. authorize. done.

each one takes about 30 seconds. no passwords to enter. no code. just click and allow.

step 3. create a context file.

this is the secret sauce. make a folder on your computer called morning-briefing. inside that folder, make a text file called about-me.md and put this in it:

cowork reads this file every single time it runs. this is how it knows who you are, what you care about, and how you like things written. without it, you'd get a generic summary. with it, you get YOUR summary. write it once. never touch it again.

step 4. schedule it.

type /schedule in cowork. tell it to run every weekday at 6:30 AM (or whenever you want it ready before you wake up). paste this as the task:

that's it. cowork runs this every morning. you wake up, open the folder, read your briefing. done.

one thing to do right now. go to your computer's energy settings and make sure it doesn't go to sleep before your briefing time. on mac that's system settings, then energy. on windows it's power settings. set it to stay awake until at least 7 AM. if it sleeps, the task won't run. takes 30 seconds to fix and you'll never think about it again.

step 5 (bonus). dispatch it to your phone.

this part is brand new. shipped march 17. it's called dispatch.

open cowork on your desktop. click dispatch in the sidebar. a QR code pops up. scan it with the claude app on your phone.

now you have a direct line to your computer from your pocket. you can text claude from bed and say "run my morning briefing" and it does it right there on your desktop. you check the results from your phone.

it's like texting your assistant before you even get out of bed.

dispatch works best for stuff like this. reading your email, pulling your calendar, writing a summary. that's exactly what we built. clean match.

these all work in free claude. no paid plan. no setup. just paste and go.

the meeting prep prompt

turns 10 minutes of prep into 30 seconds.

the email triage prompt

draft replies included. you're not just sorting. you're done.

the weekly reset prompt

run this every friday. it's a free performance review from someone with no ego.

the "explain this to my boss" prompt

i use this before every important email and every slide deck. it works every single time.

plaud note pro

today's build gets your emails, calendar, and slack into one morning briefing. but it doesn't capture the one thing that eats more of your day than anything else.

meetings.

you walk out of a 45 minute call and think "i'll remember the important stuff." you won't. i never did.

plaud clips to your shirt. records everything. transcribes it automatically. then i paste that transcript into claude and get action items, follow ups, and a summary in about 30 seconds.

the whole thing costs $170 for the hardware and $29/month for the plan. i've tried the apps that do this from your laptop mic. they miss half of what people say. plaud sits right on you and catches everything.

pair it with today's morning briefing workflow and you've got your entire work day on autopilot. meetings captured. mornings sorted. nothing slips.

one workflow. two levels. pick the one that fits and go try it tomorrow morning.

the free version works. the paid version just makes it automatic.

either way, you're done scrolling through tabs wondering what matters. that's the whole point.

see you next tuesday.

- Zack

p.s. next week i'm showing you how to make claude remember everything about you permanently. not just one file. everything. across every conversation.

5 referrals → Stacked community access (exclusive workflows & early access)

15 referrals → The Stacked Operating System ($99 value)

35 referrals → 3 months of Claude Pro ($60 value)

50 referrals → Stacked merch (hat + hoodie)