Module 6 · Your tool-building playbook

The playbook: designing your own next tool

You’ve built three tools. Here’s the part that outlasts this course: every tool you build from here follows the same five moves. Learn the loop once and you never need a lesson again.

You already ran this loop three times without naming it — the proposal generator, the client hub, the dashboard. Now we name it, so you can run it on your own, for any task in your business.

The five-move loop

Tape this to the wall. Every future build is these five moves, in order.

1. Notice a task you’ve done three times the same way. Three times is the signal — it’s a real pattern, not a one-off. If you dread it, or you’re doing it late at night, better still.
2. Name it in one sentence: input → processing → output. “Client details in → a drafted proposal → a PDF out.” If you can say it in one breath, it’s buildable.
3. Pick the pattern. Needs writing, judgment, or conversation while it runs? That’s a Claude-driven tool (Pattern A) — a folder with a playbook Claude follows. Just stores, shows, or calculates? That’s a standalone app (Pattern B) — it runs by itself once built. Plenty of tools are both, like your client hub.
4. Write the kickoff prompt with the five-part recipe from Module 1. It’s below, so you never have to go dig for it.
5. Build v1 rough, then live with it for a week. Don’t polish first. Use the ugly version, notice what annoys you, and fix only that. A tool you use beats a tool you admire.

The five-part recipe, ready to reuse

This is the same recipe from Module 1 — the one that gets Claude building the right thing the first time. Fill in the five parts and paste it into a fresh folder to start any build.

I want to build a tool. Here's the recipe:

The job: [ONE SENTENCE — what this tool does. For example: "Draft a thank-you note to a client from a few details about the job."]
The input: [WHAT I'LL GIVE IT — for example: "the client's name, what we did for them, and one nice detail about the project."]
The output: [WHAT I GET BACK, EXACTLY — for example: "a warm note I can copy into an email, in three lengths: one line, one paragraph, and a full note."]
The look: [HOW IT SHOULD FEEL — for example: "clean and simple, my brand colors, nothing fancy."]
The boundaries: [WHAT IT SHOULD NOT DO — for example: "no internet, no accounts, don't invent details I didn't give you."]

Before you write any code, tell me your plan in plain English. Keep it simple — this runs on my computer, just for me.