2.5 Your First Real Workflow
Time: ~30 minutes
What You'll Learn
- Identify the best automation opportunity in your actual job
- Combine connectors, plugins, skills, and customizations into one workflow
- Build something you will genuinely use starting Monday morning
- Test and refine until it fits your real work perfectly
Key Concepts
The Shift: Course to Consultant
Up until now, Claude has been your teacher working through a practice scenario. That's over. In this lesson, Claude becomes your consultant. There is no pre-built scenario. No sample files. No fictional company. The subject matter is your actual job, your real tasks, your real pain points.
Discovery Interview
Claude will ask you questions about your actual work:
"What's one thing you do every week that feels repetitive?"
"What takes you the longest?"
"Walk me through your Monday morning -- what's the first task you dread?"
"What tools do you live in?"
Answer honestly. The more specific you are, the better your workflow will be.
Identify the Opportunity
Based on your answers, Claude will propose 2-3 workflow ideas ranked by impact. These might look like:
- Automating a weekly status report
- Generating a client onboarding checklist
- Building a meeting prep brief from your calendar and notes
- Creating expense reports from receipts
- Producing a content calendar from a few inputs
You pick the one that would save you the most time or headaches.
Build It Together
This is where every skill from Module 2 comes together. You and Claude will:
- Connect the right tools using connectors from Lesson 2.1
- Activate the right plugin from Lesson 2.2
- Use skills and commands from Lesson 2.3 to power the workflow
- Customize the output to match your preferences from Lesson 2.4
Test and Iterate
You will run the workflow on your real data. Not sample data. Yours. Then you will refine it -- adjust the format, change the tone, add a step, remove a step -- until it is something you would actually use without thinking twice.
In Your Real Work
This is the full-circle moment. In Module 1, we asked "what do you do?" to pick a practice scenario. Now we're asking the same question — but this time, there's no scenario. This is your real work.
By the end of this lesson, you will have an actual working workflow tailored to your job. Not a demo. Not a tutorial exercise. A tool you will open on Monday and use.
What You'll Walk Away With
By the end, you should have:
- A connected tool pulling live data into your workflow
- A plugin installed and customized for your role
- At least one slash command tailored to your task
- A tested workflow you've run on your actual data
- Something you'll genuinely use next week
Real-World Applications
- Weekly reporting that used to take an hour, done in minutes
- Client prep that pulls from your real tools and formats itself
- Recurring documents that generate from a single command
- Any repetitive task in your workweek, automated and personalized
How to Start
start lesson 2.5