Work OS: the operating system for your career

Yesterday I shared how to build a personal AI operating system. Today, the work version.

Same idea, pointed at your business. A few folders and one file, so AI does your recurring work instead of sitting in a tab waiting to be asked.

Give it an hour. Here’s the setup.

1. Make your work folders (10 min)

In a Claude Project or a folder, lay out the shape of your business:

• Clients (one folder each)
• Projects
• Admin (invoices, contracts, filing)
• Templates (the emails and docs you write again and again)
• Content (whatever you publish)

2. Write the CLAUDE.md (15 min)

The file the AI reads every time. Make it about how your business works. Something like:

I run [your business]. We do [what] for [who].
How I write to clients: warm, brief, plain.
Our tools: [list them].
Standing rule: never put a client's private details into a general chat.
When you draft something, match the template in /Templates.

3. Load the repeatable work (15 min)

Pick the three things you do every week. The follow-up email. The proposal. The weekly update. Put one real example of each in /Templates. Now the AI copies your way of doing it, not a generic one.

4. Turn one task into a skill (10 min)

Take the most repetitive job and write it down as steps. “To draft a client follow-up: read the last call notes, pull the action items, write it in our voice, keep it under 150 words.” That’s a skill. The AI runs it the same way every time, whoever asks.

5. Run it on real work (10 min)

“Draft this week’s follow-ups from the call notes in /Clients.” “Turn these notes into a proposal using the template.” You’re operating now, not chatting.

That’s a Work OS. The difference between a chatbot you open now and then and a system that does the work with you.

It’s also how one person does the work of a team. You wrote the brief once.

The guides, personal and work, are free. If you’d rather have it built for you, on your own tools, in a single session, that’s the install I do. When it’s more than one of you, that’s a Team OS. Either way, you’ve got the blueprint.