What today looks like

The 90 minutes.

Half of today you'll be working, not watching. There's no coffee break — the two hands-on blocks are the break.

Where you got to

Claude is now wired into your world.

• Connectors on: Drive, Gmail and Calendar can supply the real source.
• A Project has a real folder: the job and its outputs have a proper home.
• One topic, one chat: context stays clean and useful.
• Connectors off when unused: only bring in what the job needs.
• Load it once: the same files do not need feeding every morning.

The shape

The output of one is the input to the next.

Until now each skill was a one-shot: document in, deliverable out, done. Real work is not one-shot. A consultant report lands → you need to know what is wrong with it → somebody senior needs one page → the consultant needs a letter. Three skills, one document, and you never re-type a thing.

The chain is the lesson. The skills are just the excuse to show you the shape.

Link 1 · document-review

Start with what's wrong with it.

Say review this — anything off? A 60-page report goes in; red flags, gaps and questions come out. You already have this skill from stage 1.

Link 2 · executive-summary-report

Now make it one page for someone senior.

Same conversation. Say turn those findings into an ex summary for the board — no re-upload, no pasted findings, no context repeated.

This is why “one topic, one chat” matters. A new chat per step means re-feeding everything — slower, worse, and it costs you more.

Link 3 · formal-letters

And now put it on record.

Say draft a formal letter to the consultant on the three gaps — letterhead, reference number and a firm but measured tone.

Read it before you send it. Every time. Claude writes the letter; you are still the one whose name is on it.

The one thing to get right

Check the handover, not the output.

A chain fails at the joins, not in the middle. Before the next link, check the one thing it is about to build on: did the review actually find the issue you care about? If link 1 missed it, links 2 and 3 will confidently write about the wrong thing — beautifully.

Fixing the first link is a ten-second correction. Fixing the third one means redoing all three.

15 minutes · your real work

Your turn — and use something real.

No document with you? Use Northgate from your pack. Use your own if you can — the point is that this works on your actual desk.

What just went wrong for someone here

Three ways a chain breaks.

Score the bidders, don't argue about them.

Say score these proposals. A compliance gate comes first: fail the mandatory gate and a bidder is excluded, not scored. Weighted eligibility, contractual, technical and completeness sections produce a ranked, defensible Word report with scope gaps and exclusions listed.

And this is a chain too.

Say now level the prices. commercial-evaluation picks up the scope gaps and exclusions proposal-review already found and adds them back into the pricing, so the comparison is like for like. Rate variances are flagged, bidders ranked, and the recommendation has a reason.

Technical first, then commercial — never the other way round. Price the scope you actually verified.

The two-minute version of a two-hour job

The org chart nobody wants to draw.

Say make an org chart for this project. Reporting lines, roles and names go in; a branded PowerPoint slide comes out. It is the smallest skill in today's pack and the one people use most — redrawing an org chart every time someone joins is exactly the task you named in stage 1.

Remember this?

You already named what to build.

In stage 1 you named three tasks that were repetitive, low-value and quietly annoying. That was not an icebreaker. One of those three is what you are building in the next 20 minutes.

What a skill actually is

A skill is a recipe you wrote once.

Not code. A skill is a folder with a plain-English file that says when to use it and how to do the job properly — the format, tone, sections and checks. You have used five since stage 1. skill-creator writes the sixth by interviewing you.

It is already in Cowork. Nothing to install — this one is a use, not a download.

The good candidate is a task you do the same way every time. Something you do differently each time is not a skill; it is a conversation.

skill-creator · driven

Watch one get built.

Say build me a skill that… It asks about the job, the output and what “good” means. Answer in plain English, run it on a real example, then correct it.

20 minutes · and you leave with it

Build yours.

Twenty minutes gets you a working first version, not a perfect one. The second pass matters more than the first.

Show and tell

Run yours on the screen.

Two or three people. Sixty seconds each. Say the trigger; show what came out.

What you unlocked

Your toolkit just became yours.