Transcription
A few days ago, Anthropic launched Claude routines. And if you're building a business or thinking about starting one or maybe you're selling AI services to clients, this is one of the most important things that has shipped in AI this week. So, here's the simplest way that I can explain it.
Until now, every AI automation that you've used worked like an alarm clock. You set the time, it goes off, and it's useful, but it only knows one thing, what time it is. Okay? Claude routines basically work like a doorbell. Something happens in your business, whether a lead comes in or a bad review drops or a customer cancels or an invoice goes overdue and Claude wakes up and handles it immediately in a cloud whether you are or not at your desk. That is a different type of AI. It's not one that you remember to use, but one that reacts to your business on its own.
So, in the next 14-15 minutes or so, I'm going to break down exactly what routines are, how they're different from schedule tasks, as well as tools like N10, and I'm going to give you 13 specific routines that you can set up this week. I'm also going to give you a plug-and-play prompt template that lets you create your own for any business in about 10 minutes. So, let's get into it.
Okay, so let's start with what a routine actually is, right? Because most explanations are, I think, over complicating this. So, basically, a routine is three things packaged together. Okay? First of all, you've got the instructions. That's essentially a prompt in plain English or whichever your language is. So, you're telling Claude what job to do and how to do it. Something like, "When a new lead comes in, research them and draft a follow-up email." Or, "When a bad review appears, write a professional response." You can think of it like writing a job description. Okay? You're not writing code. And I know this feels or maybe seems that it could be complicated, but it's not. Although a lot of people get stuck here. So, I want to give you a template that you can use in any business. Okay? And I want to give you the structure because I think it's important to think about it like that. It basically has five parts.
First, you're going to start with the role. Okay? So, you're going to say you are, I don't know, my lead follow-up specialist or whatever type of job you're giving it. Your job is to and then describe your outcome. Draft a personalized follow-up email within 2 minutes of a new lead arriving. And then you need to give it the actual steps. When you run, you need to do this first. What to read or pull something like read the lead's form submission and any available public information about them. Number two, what to think or what to decide on. Something like identify their likely need based on the inquiry. And then number three, what to produce. You can say draft a short warm follow-up email referencing something specific about them. Then the next part in our structure is the output. Where to post and format. Post the draft to my Slack channel. Keep it under 100 words. And then your rules. Okay, what not to do. Those are your guardrails. You can say something like never send the email directly. Always wait for my approval. Or never use generic templates or never mention this specific word or sentence or phrase. That's it. Raw outcome. Steps. Output. Rules. You can write instructions for any routine in 10 minutes with this exact structure. I'm going to drop it in a downloadable version together with all the prompts in the community so you can just download and use them directly.
Now the second element part of the routine is the workspace and that's a folder in the cloud where Claude keeps its reference material. Whether that's your brand voice guidelines or your email templates or your pricing sheet, your customer FAQ, whatever information you give it to have as reference and knowledge base. You set it up once and it stays there until you change it. And what I think is super powerful is that every time you improve a document in that workspace, every routine that references it gets smarter. So your AI gets better at your business over time essentially.
And then thirdly, the app access. So the tools that Claude is allowed to use during the job, whether it's Slack or Gmail or Google Drive or Notion or your CRM, whatever your business runs on, you basically decide which apps each routine can touch. Obviously, the more access means the more capability, but also the higher risk and less means more control on your side. So you need to find the right balance.
Now you package those three together. You set a trigger and then Claude runs the job automatically in the cloud like I said whether your laptop is open or not.
Now I think it's important to compare this with scheduled tasks because obviously if you've been using Claude for a while you might be thinking but didn't Claude do scheduled tasks. You tell Claude, "Every morning at 7 a.m., do this." And at 7 a.m., without a mistake, Claude is going to do it. I still use them. They're amazing. They're great for daily briefings, for cleanup tasks, for recurring reports. But scheduled tasks only understand time. The only trigger is a moment on the calendar has arrived. All right.
Now, routines understand events like the doorbell. Okay? Now, a routine can still run on a schedule every morning or every Monday or Friday, whatever you want, but it can also fire the moment that something happens in your business. Whether a lead fills in a form or a customer posts a review or a booking gets canceled, the event itself is what wakes Claude up, right? So, the alarm clock versus doorbell is what you need to keep in mind. The alarm rings whether or not anything happened. The doorbell rings because something happened. And that's when you actually need Claude to show up, right?
So now two more differences that I think are important to mention. Scheduled tasks run on your computer. So your laptop or computer has to be open. Routines run in Anthropic's cloud. So you can have your laptop closed. You can be traveling. You can be asleep. You can be on a plane. And also schedule tasks can pause mid-job to ask you for permission. Routines run fully on their own from start to finish. And then you review the work at the end, not during. Okay, both of them use the same LLM, the same Claude brain, but different operating mode.
Now, some of you who are probably already using Zapier or Make or N10, you're thinking, "But don't they do the same?" And it's a fair question, but there is a difference, especially when it comes to N10. So, N10 is a workflow builder. You draw a flowchart. Step one connects to step two connects to step three. You decide every branch, every condition, every action in advance. If something comes up that you did not plan for, the flow either breaks or does the wrong thing, right? The intelligence is something that lives in the design that you build essentially.
On the other hand, routines work differently because you don't have to draw any flows. You describe the outcome only. When a lead comes in, research them and draft a personalized follow-up. And then Claude figures out how to do that every single time based on what's actually in front of it. Different lead, different research, different email. Okay. So, the simplest decision rule that I can give you is you can use routines when Claude is the one that's doing the work, the thinking, the writing, the researching, the analyzing, the drafting. And then you can use N10 when the workflow itself is the product. I don't know. You need 10 apps connected in a precise sequence with strict exact conditions. Okay?
So, routines don't kill N10. Regardless of what other people say, they replace the part of your automation stack where you were using an N10 just to make Claude react to something. For example, for that specific job, routines are simpler, they're faster to set up, and they're better at handling situations that change every time. For everything else, you can still use N10 if you're familiar with it and you like it.
Now, let me show you 13 routines built for the kinds of businesses that you're probably running or building for clients. And to make it easy, I have split these into two groups. The first 10 fire when something happens in your business, the doorbells. Okay. The last three run on a schedule, the alarm clocks. Both are routines. Both run in the cloud. So, let's go. This is going to be a rapid fire.
Number one, new lead follow-up writer. So, a lead fills out your contract form. The routine fires. Claude reads the inquiry details, drafts a tailored follow-up email, not a template, an actual personalized response, and posts it to, I don't know, your Slack. Or it can save it as an email draft for your review. And that's because speed to lead is the number one predictor of conversion in service businesses. Most founders respond in hours, sometimes in days. This responds in minutes. So, if you're selling this as an agency service, this is the routine that clients understand the fastest. So, you might want to start with that.
Number two, negative review response drafter. Okay, so here's the thing. A one-star or a two-star review lands in many businesses. The routine can fire then. Claude can read the review, identify the core complaint, write a calm and professional public response, and flag the root issue internally because bad reviews that sit unanswered for days actually destroy trust with every future customer who reads them. So, a fast, thoughtful response often turns the situation around and shows everyone watching that you take it seriously and you actually care about your clients. So whether you're doing this for your own business or selling it, I think it's a really good one to keep in your back pocket.
Number three, the missed call recovery assistant. Okay, your phone system logs a missed call. For example, the routine then fires. Claude drafts a callback text or an email with context: who called, what they likely needed, and posts it for your team to act on. Because every missed call is potential revenue walking away. Most businesses never follow up and this does before the caller tries your competitor.
Number four, the overdue invoice nudger. Your accounting tool flags an invoice as overdue. The routine fires. Claude writes a polite personalized payment reminder that is tailored to the customer relationship. It won't be too generic. Your payment is past due, the type of email that nobody wants to send or receive because chasing payments is uncomfortable. But most founders avoid it until it's awkward. And with this kind of routine, Claude doesn't have that problem. And friendly nudges at the right moment can have a dramatic improvement on collection rates.
Number five, canceled booking win-back drafts. A customer cancels an appointment or a booking. That's when the routine fires and Claude can draft a message to reschedule or have a retention offer that's personalized to the booking history and the customer profile. Because trust me, a canceled booking is revenue that was probably 80% closed. But a warm, fast follow-up can recover a real percentage of cancellations that would otherwise be gone permanently. So if you run a service business or you build for one, this routine can pay for itself probably in the first week or two.
Number six, the contact form router. For example, a website contact form is submitted. A lot of businesses have that. That's when the routine fires. Claude classifies the inquiry, whether it's a sales lead, a support question, a partnership pitch, job application, spam, and then routes it to the right person with a drafted first response. Most contact forms go into a shared inbox and then sit there because nobody checks them. This one gets sorted and handled in seconds. So, if you're an agency owner, this is one of probably the easiest routines to install for clients because every business with a website has this problem.
Number seven, new customer onboarding message. Think about it. When a sale closes or a subscription starts, that's when the routine fires. Claude can draft a personalized welcome message with next steps, an onboarding checklist, an immediate action item tailored to what the customer bought. The first 48 hours after purchase are when customer confidence is the highest and also when most businesses go completely silent. Filling the gap with a thoughtful, specific welcome message can set the tone for the entire relationship.
Number eight, the support escalation summarizer. So, when a support ticket gets marked as urgent, the routine fires, Claude summarizes the issue, suggests a resolution path, drafts a reply, and posts it all to your team's channel. So, the right person can jump in with full context instead of starting from scratch. Escalated tickets that take hours to triage cost you customers. This gets context to the right person in a couple of minutes, not hours. So if you're building AI solutions for service businesses, support triage is one of the highest impact installations that you can offer.
Number nine, abandoned cart recovery writer. So if you are in e-commerce, your e-commerce platform, for example, detects an abandoned cart. The routine fires and Claude drafts a personalized recovery message that addresses the likely objections, whether it's price or timing or trust. The cart recovery emails are among the highest ROI automations in e-commerce, but most are generic templates that feel like spam. So, Claude writes each one for that specific customer in that specific cart. The difference in recovery rate can be quite significant.
Number 10, churn risk responder. Okay, so let's assume that a customer downgrades or pauses or starts the cancellation flow. That's when the routine fires. So Claude can draft a save attempt personalized to the usage history and likely reason for leaving and then flags the churn risk for your team. By the time that most businesses notice churn, the customer is usually already gone. This intervenes at the exact moment of the decision. So for SaaS founders and subscription businesses, this single routine can measurably move your retention numbers for your clients once if you're selling this to them.
Okay, so those are the 10 doorbells. Okay, the API-type routines that are firing when your business generates a signal. Now, there are three more that are alarm clocks. There are scheduled routines that run in the cloud fully autonomously with full access to your connected apps.
So, number 11, your morning founder command center report. I get this one every single Monday at 8:00 in the morning. You can do it every day if you want. This routine can run and Claude can pull from your Slack, email, calendar, project management tool, analytics, and it produces one simple brief. Tells you what happened overnight, what's urgent today, what decisions are waiting, and gives you a plan of attack. Most founders spend at least 30 to 45 minutes every single morning just catching up across six different apps. This does it for you before you, I don't know, pour your coffee or tea. Once you've had a week of these showing up, you will wonder how you were able to operate without them. Trust me on this one.
Number 12, weekly founder product brief. So, for example, every Friday afternoon when this routine runs, Claude can summarize the entire week. Customer complaints, feature requests, support volume, churn signals, what shipped, what didn't, all in one page and give you the whole picture. Founders running small teams often lose the pulse of their own product because they are buried in sales or operations. This is able to bring the pulse back to them weekly without asking anyone on their team to write a report. So if you're an aspiring founder or you're designing your first operating rhythm, maybe you want to start here.
And number 13, competitor launch watcher. So you could do something along these lines. Every Monday morning when this routine runs, Claude checks your competitors' websites, release notes, change logs, public announcements, Twitter, Instagram, wherever they are, and if anything changed, it drafts a brief with what it means for your positioning and roadmap. If nothing changed, it just tells you that is the case in one line. Staying market aware usually means manually checking five competitor sites every week and hoping that you notice what changed. This does it for you and only surfaces what actually matters.
So, what do you do with all of these? Here's your one move. Pick one of these 13. I recommend the one that is closest to a problem that you're dealing with right now and set it up today. Not tomorrow, today. The setup guide and all 13 prompt templates are linked in the description. You're going to find them in the community. They're completely free. Just go enjoy.
And if you're building AI solutions for clients, you now have a menu of installations that you can offer. Each one of these is a productized service. So, go and sell it. And if you want to see how other people are doing this or just be surrounded by over 13,000 other people who are on the exact same path as you are, you're always more than welcome to join our community. It is completely free. The link is here. And you will be able to join our bi-weekly calls and ask any questions you have so that you don't stay stuck. You just keep moving forward.
All right. Thank you so, so much for watching. Like this video if you did. Be sure to subscribe if you haven't done so. Share this with anyone in your circle of friends or family or co-workers who's wondering what Claude routines can do and how they can impact their business. And until next time, I suggest you go ahead and watch this video over here. And I'll see you soon.