Module 5 · Build #3 — The Know-Your-Numbers Dashboard

The plain-English brief

A page of numbers is good. A page of numbers plus someone who reads it for you and says “here’s what changed and here’s what to look into” is what actually changes how you run the week. That someone is Claude.

Two layers: the page shows, Claude explains

This is the same one-two you built into the Client Hub in Build #2, and by now it should feel like second nature:

• The page shows you the numbers at a glance, any time you open it.
• Claude reads those same numbers and tells you, in plain words, what they mean this month.

You’re about to teach Claude a small routine it remembers for this project. Paste this:

Add a "monthly brief" routine to this project's CLAUDE.md: whenever I say "monthly brief," read the current data in data/ and write me a short plain-English brief: what went up, what went down, anything unusual, and two or three questions I should look into. No jargon, no padding — write it like a sharp employee who respects my time. Save it as briefs/[year]-[month]-brief.md and show it to me.

Run it now for the current data.

Claude writes the instruction into CLAUDE.md — a plain-text notes file it reads every time it opens this folder, so it remembers how you like things done — and then runs the brief straight away. What comes back reads like a note from a sharp employee: say, revenue up 8% on last month, your two busiest services flipped, three no-shows worth looking at, and a couple of questions worth chasing.

Dial it in to taste

The first brief is a starting point, not the finished thing. If it’s too shallow or too long, just say so in plain English — “go one level deeper on the revenue drop,” or “keep it to five lines, I skim these.” Claude rewrites the routine and every future brief follows the new shape.