It's Sunday at 8pm and I'm replanning the whole week in my head. Again.

Who has what, which two things collide on Tuesday, when I'm supposed to work out, what we're eating, what I still need from the store. It's the invisible job of being the default parent, and it used to eat my whole Sunday night.

It doesn't anymore. A file I wrote once audits my week now, every Sunday, and sends me the rundown like a chief of staff. Conflicts, what's missing, the weather, what to wear, the meal plan, the groceries by aisle. I fired myself from Sunday night planning. Here's how.

1. Write your priorities down once

Everything here rests on one file. Think of it as the job description for your week. If Claude doesn't know what you actually care about, it can't tell you when your calendar is betraying it.

Make a project in Claude for your week, then add one file to it. Don't type it cold, talk it out. Hit the microphone and just say it.

Interview me and save the answers to a file called my-priorities.md. Ask me about: my goals for this quarter, my non-negotiables (the things that should never get bumped, like 5am workouts, family dinner, date night), my roles this season (mom, my job, the side project), and the two or three people whose time always comes first. One question at a time. When we're done, save it all to the file so you can check my week against it later.

Now you have a document that knows what your week is supposed to protect. That's the home base. Everything else plugs into it.

2. Turn it into a scheduled task

A one-time answer isn't the goal. You want this to happen every Sunday without you asking. So you make it a scheduled task, a job Claude runs on a repeat, on its own.

In Claude, you set this up as a recurring task, and that recurring task is where you paste the prompt. Tell Cowork to create a new recurring task, set to repeat every Sunday afternoon. Give it this as the instruction. It's a big prompt, and that's on purpose. You're describing the whole brief you want to wake up to.

Every Sunday at 5pm, audit my week ahead and send me a brief. Read my calendar for the next seven days. Compare every day to my-priorities.md. Flag anything that conflicts, anything double booked, and anything that serves none of my priorities so I can cut it. Tell me what's missing: if there's no workout block, no family dinner, no focus time, say so. Escalate the two or three things that genuinely need me this week, the ones I can't drop the ball on. Give me the week at a glance, day by day, in plain language. Then close with the weather each day and what to wear for it, our meal plan for the week, and the grocery list for those meals grouped by aisle, at the very bottom. Keep it short enough to read on my phone in two minutes.

One thing people miss, and it's the thing that makes the whole audit work: that recurring task needs to actually see your priorities file. If it can't reach my-priorities.md, it has nothing to compare your week against, and you'll get a pretty rundown that's checking against nothing. So make the file part of the task. You have three ways to do it:

  • Upload it into the chat where you set up the task, so the file rides along with the prompt every time it runs.
  • Point it at the file on your desktop: tell it exactly where the file lives, like "read my-priorities.md on my desktop before you audit."
  • Let it grab the file itself, if it's saved in a project or folder Claude can already see. Just name the file and tell it to open it first.

Any of the three works. The only wrong move is setting up the task without the file attached at all.

Remember: make it a recurring task, not a one-off ask, and make sure your priorities file is attached to it. Recurring is what makes the brief show up in the Claude app on your phone every Sunday. The file is what gives it something real to audit against.

3. What lands on Sunday

Sunday afternoon, the brief arrives on my phone. Week at a glance, day by day. The double-booking I would have found out about Tuesday morning, flagged on Sunday instead. The blunt line I need to hear: zero workout blocks Thursday.

Then the part that makes it feel like a person: the weather for each day and what to wear for it, dinners for the week, and the groceries I need, grouped by aisle so I can screenshot it and shop straight down the list.

SUNDAY BRIEF Your week: Jul 21 to 27 CONFLICT Tue 2pm: Luna's dentist overlaps your review. Move one. No workout block Thursday. Add one? WEATHER + WEAR Wed 54 and rain. Boots, the wool coat. DINNERS Mon pasta. Tue tacos. Wed sheet-pan chicken. Thu leftovers. Fri pizza night. GROCERIES, BY AISLE Produce: peppers, onions, lettuce Meat: chicken thighs, ground beef Pantry: pasta, taco shells, sauce You wrote the file once. This runs itself.
The whole week, on my phone, every Sunday. I didn't make this. A file I wrote once did.

4. Build your own recipe

The brief above is mine. Yours should be yours. The move is simple: the base prompt audits your calendar against your priorities, and then you bolt on whatever else you want to wake up to. Add a block, drop a block. Here are the three I use most.

If you want the groceries, by aisle, add this:

Add to the brief: build the grocery list from this week's dinners. Group it by aisle (produce, dairy, meat, pantry, frozen) and put it at the very bottom so I can screenshot it and shop straight down the list.

If you want the weather and what to wear, add this:

Add to the brief: pull the weather for each day this week, and tell me what to wear for it. Call out the days I have meetings, school pickup, or the gym, since those are the ones I plan an outfit around.

If you want the meals planned around your real week, add this:

Add to the brief: plan five dinners around our schedule. Keep them fast on the busy nights. Olive won't eat green things, Luna only wants pasta, and my husband has a nut allergy. Don't repeat anything from last week.

Stack the ones you want, skip the ones you don't. That's the whole recipe. One file, one scheduled task, and you're done.

What to notice

  • The priorities file is the home base. Once your week and what you care about live in one place, everything else plugs into it.
  • Scheduled, not asked. A recurring job is what turns this from a thing you remember to do into a thing that happens to you.
  • Make it recurring so it hits your phone. A scheduled message lands in the Claude app, not just the laptop.
  • Bolt on your own blocks. Groceries, weather, meals, whatever your Sunday brain is carrying. Add it to the prompt.
Sunday night anxiety became a Sunday briefing. One file did that.

Pair this with the email agent and your inbox and your week both start running themselves. And if you want the dinners to go deeper than a line in the brief, here's the 15-minute weekly meal plan.