☕ Welcome
Hey you
Someone asked me last week if I write this newsletter myself or if I use Claude, because it actually sounds like me. Thanks for the compliment 😊.
Yes, I write it, but I don’t write it alone. Claude is my idea bouncer, my content radar, and my editor. Running a one-person show means you need a good team, even if that team is AI.
Claude, left on its own, unsupervised, will take your voice right out of your own writing. You end up losing the uniqueness of your voice. To keep it from turning my words into something generic, I had to give it very specific instructions about who I am and how I write. That set of instructions is called a skill.
If you've ever rewritten everything Claude/ChatGPT gave you because it didn't sound like you, a skill is your fix. That's what this issue is about.
TLDR: Claude has a default setting and it is not you. This issue is about fixing that with something called a skill, what it is, how it differs from what we covered in Issues #1 and #2, and one you can build tonight in under 30 minutes.
🤯 WAIT, WHAT?
Your AI Post-It Note
My first real job out of university was as a sales coordinator, cold calling hotels across Canada for Booking.com.
I had Post-it notes all over my screen. The 5 Whys. The benefits of listing on Booking.com. ABC: Always Be Closing, etc. I would scan my Post-it notes when I needed them (I still have Post-it notes on my screen today).
In AI, that's called a skill. A saved set of instructions you trigger on demand for specific tasks. If I were making those calls today, I'd set up a” Hotel Cold Calling Skill”. I'd tell Claude: hotel name, location, third call attempt, listed on Expedia but not Booking.com. Then I'd say "run hotel cold calling skill," and it would pull up my 5 Whys, my pitch points, my closing sequence, all adapted to that specific hotel.
The Post-it kept me on track without me having to think about it. A skill does the same thing.
If you have ever found yourself rewriting everything Claude gave you, adding the same corrections over and over, basically bullying it into a better answer, that is your sign that you need a skill!
Skills come in two flavors:
Specs: how to build something. A cold call script, a meeting recap format, etc. Principles: how to think about something. This can be your brand voice or the tone you want in client emails.
Back to my first job. Those Post-it notes on my screen were not just reminders. Some told me what to do: use the 5 Whys, ABC, and always lock in the next step. Others told me how to think, stay curious, and listen more than I talk. Specs and principles.
Today, those “Post-its” can live inside Claude. I do not have to rewrite them every time. I just call them up.
Now you might be wondering how this is different from what we covered in Issues #1 and #2. Here's how I think about it:
Custom instructions are your personality. These are always on and are applied generally across the board -> "I'm Cinzia. No em dashes. Write like a real person."
Project instructions are your briefing notes. Think of starting a new role as a consultant. On day one, someone walks you through the context: here's the client, here's what matters. That's what project instructions do -> "This is my newsletter. Here's my audience. Here's what we're working on." It only applies inside that particular project.
Skills are your playbook. The labeled Post-it you grab when you need it -> "Edit this in my voice. Summarize this meeting." You trigger it when needed by asking it to run a skill. You're in control of when it is to be used, no trigger = not being used.
Three layers. Together, they become your unfair AI edge.
⚡ TRY IT TONIGHT
Build Your First Skill in 10 Minutes
Many of you have heard about prompts, which is really a fancy way of saying what and how you share tasks and instructions with the AI. Think of it like how you give instructions in one way for a toddler and in another way for your colleague. The better and clearer your instructions, the better the output.
A skill is how you save those instructions so you never have to rewrite them (or repeat yourself). Here's the one I used to build the Cinz.AI brand voice skill. I use it every time I ask Claude to edit my writing. In order to get to build this skill, I started off with Claude asking me questions, the kind you'd find in a personality test.
I want to discover my brand's personality type. Ask me 5 quick questions, one at a time:
1. Ask me to choose between Extrovert vs Introvert energy for my brand (does it initiate or reflect?) 2. Ask me to choose between Intuitive vs Sensing (big picture or step-by-step?) 3. Ask me to choose between Thinking vs Feeling (logic-first or empathy-first?) 4. Ask me to choose a DISC color: Red (dominant), Yellow (optimistic), Green (caring), or Blue(analytical) 5. Ask me to choose a Jungian archetype from this list: Hero, Sage, Explorer, Creator, Caregiver, Jester, Lover, Ruler, Outlaw, Magician, Innocent, Everyperson. Give me a one-sentence description of each so I can pick.
After I answer all 5, give me: a brand personality summary in 2-3 sentences, 3 voice traits that follow from this type, and 1 thing my brand should never sound like. Then turn this into a reusable skill I can save.
Answer the questions one at a time. At the end, you’ll have a skill that is yours, built in one conversation.
Want to keep going? Here are four more skills worth building, with full prompts and step-by-step instructions waiting for you in the Notion companion page:
Email tone — so Claude stops writing like HR and starts writing like you
Meeting recaps — paste messy notes, get a clean summary every time
Social captions — your platform, your length, your vibe
Feedback filter — honest notes, no praise sandwich
📱 THIS WEEK IN AI
Good Stuff From Around the Internet
You are not imagining it. The future just got harder to picture. Harvard Business Review has a name for that feeling: AI fog. Life runs on long bets: degrees, mortgages, career paths. All of them assume tomorrow looks roughly like today. AI is breaking that assumption.
Is the promotion worth grinding for if your role looks completely different in three years? HBR's advice: stop optimizing for one future. Stay flexible, reskill often, keep your options open.
Matthew Gallagher built Medvi, a telehealth startup, from his LA apartment using AI tools for everything: code, website copy, ads, customer service. By the end of its first year it had 250,000 customers and $401 million in sales.
The story has since attracted scrutiny and the full picture is more complicated. But the underlying idea is not going away. The number of people required to generate meaningful revenue is dropping fast.
Many of us are sitting on an idea we have never tested because it felt too big to start alone. Stories like this make that question feel more practical than theoretical. What would you build if the barrier was just 30 minutes and a prompt?
🌟 BEFORE YOU CLOSE THIS TAB
What are you doing tonight at 8 pm?
If the answer is Netflix or watching the Stanley Cup, no worries, I’ll be doing the same. But why not make the most of that time? What is that new trend, doing everything to the max? Why not be learningmaxxing AI? Anthropic launched a free course platform in March. They have 13 courses, no credit card required, and you can start with Claude 101. Do it during the intermission. Do it on your commute. Do it while you watch Love is Blind.
Learning AI is not about booking a 3-day course and coming out as an expert. It is about 15 to 30 minutes a day, applied to something real. This is habit stacking, small reps that compound. Do it for a few weeks, and you will surprise yourself. I surprised myself!
Start here → anthropic.skilljar.com (you will need to create a free account to access the training)
Your unfair advantage, one week at a time.
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