Claude Cowork

Homebase

One briefing each morning, built from your email and calendar. One task, set up once.

1
task
~45
min setup

What Homebase does

With your permission, Homebase reads your email and calendars each morning and builds a single briefing on a Notion dashboard you can open from any device. It shows what needs your attention today, adds dated items to your calendar, drafts replies for you to review, and lists bills before they fall due. On the days you choose, it adds a financial review, a meal plan, and a look ahead at important dates.

There is one scheduled task, at a time you set. The dashboard updates in place, so there is only ever one of it, and nothing to delete. Your household sets the shape: a single adult, a couple, dependents, carers, housemates, pets, any mix. Claude builds only the parts that fit the people who actually live there.

What the brief covers

01
Daily essentialsEvery morning

Inbox triage with a sent-folder cross-check, today and tomorrow's calendar, urgent bills due within seven days, and any school or childcare messages if relevant. Draft replies prepared for anything needing a response.

GmailGoogle Calendar
02
Financial reviewYour chosen day

A fuller pass over bills, subscriptions, insurance and notices, grouped by urgency and presented as a table. Nothing charges unnoticed.

Gmail
03
Important datesYour chosen day

Birthdays and anniversaries ahead, plus expiries and renewals: passports, licences, registrations, insurances. Kept in Notion and surfaced before they bite.

Notion
04
Meal planYour chosen day

An optional weekly plan built from your pantry records and any recipe files, applying your safety rules in full. Grocery list grouped and ready. Skip it entirely if it is not useful to you.

NotionProject files

The two things that make it safe to trust

Approvals gate Creating a new calendar event is automatic. Deleting or editing an existing one is never done silently. Claude proposes the change in a Notion Approvals queue with approval switched off. You tick Approve, and only then does the next run carry it out, against the exact stored target.
No duplicates Before writing any event the run checks for an existing match and skips it. If a run already completed in the last hour, it reconciles rather than repeating its writes. One brief, one dashboard, always current.
Draft-only email Claude reads mail and prepares drafts labelled [Homebase draft]. It can never send. The only channel it acts through is the calendar.
Runs on Claude Desktop on your computer, while the app is open and Keep Awake is on.

Your privacy

This guide holds nothing personal. Every detail you enter in the wizard stays in your browser and is never sent anywhere. Your own information lives only in your own Claude project and your own Notion. Nothing about the household that built this travels with it.

Before you start

0 of 5 confirmed
✓
Claude Pro or Max account
Scheduled tasks and projects need a paid plan. Sign up at claude.ai.
✓
Claude Desktop installed
Separate from the browser. Download from claude.ai/download. Mac and Windows.
✓
A Notion account
Free tier is fine. The dashboard and records live here. You connect it during setup.
✓
Gmail and Google Calendar
Connected during setup with your existing Google login. Apple Calendar users make Google Calendar their source of truth first.
✓
Setup file ready to upload
The file homebase-full-setup.md must be in your Homebase project before the session starts. Step 02 explains how.

Setup steps

1
Create the Homebase project in Cowork

Open Claude Desktop and go to Cowork, not an ordinary chat. Cowork is where projects, connected apps, and scheduled tasks live. In the Cowork sidebar, click Projects, then New project, and name it Homebase. This is where your household context stays between sessions. Everything that follows happens inside this Cowork project.

2
Upload the setup file

Inside the project, add homebase-full-setup.md. This is Claude's instruction file. It must be in the project before you start the session.

Download homebase-full-setup.md

Do this before opening a chat. The session prompt checks for this file and will ask you to upload it if it is missing.
3
Connect your apps

In the project, open Cowork, click Customize, then Connect your apps. Connect three: Gmail, Google Calendar, and Notion. Sign in and accept the permissions for each. You only do this once.

4
Turn on Keep Awake

In Cowork, click Scheduled tasks. A banner reads "Scheduled tasks only run while your computer is awake." Switch the Keep awake toggle on and leave it on.

This is the most common reason a brief silently fails. Keep Awake must stay on.
5
Optional: prefill with the Wizard

Open the Wizard tab here, enter your household details, and generate your profile and prompt text. You can paste these straight in when Claude asks, which makes the session faster. Skip it if you'd rather just answer Claude's questions live.

Setup wizard

Stays on your device

Fill in what fits your household and leave the rest. Nothing here is sent anywhere; it all runs in your browser. When you are done, press Generate and copy the text Claude needs. There is no expected household shape, so add only the people, pets, and parts that are real for you.

The basics

For example "the Rivera household", or just "home". Used as a label only.

Who is in the household

Add each person or pet. Role is yours to describe. Detail is optional: who cooks, a year level and school for a school-age dependent, forbidden foods for a pet, a birthday, anything useful.

Safety rules

One per line. Name the person and the rule, stated strictly. Leave blank if there are none. Claude treats each as a hard constraint on every meal and suggestion and never softens or invents them.

Optional sections

The part after the @ on their emails, comma-separated. Include any third-party system they send through.
Appliance to favour, cuisines to avoid, favourite meals to rotate, who cooks when.

Schedule

Starting the session

Open the Homebase project in Claude Cowork. Paste the prompt below as your first message. Claude reads the setup file from the project and works through the build with you, one question at a time.

Starting prompt. Copy and paste into Cowork.
Run the Homebase full setup using the instructions in homebase-full-setup.md from the project files.

Assume nothing about my household. Ask me who is in it, and build only the sections that fit us. If that file is not available, ask me to upload it before continuing.

What happens in the session

1
Connection check~2 min

Claude tests Gmail, Calendar and Notion before asking anything. If one is missing, it gives you a single instruction and waits.

2
Build the Notion workspace~5 min

Claude creates the Homebase dashboard page and four records databases under it: Important Dates, Birthdays, Pantry, and the Approvals queue.

3
Household discovery~10 min

Open questions about who lives there, any safety rules, schools if relevant, how you cook, and when each section should run. Nothing assumed. Paste from the Wizard here if you prefilled it.

4
Light inbox scan~10 min

Claude scans the last 90 days for upcoming dates and renewals, adds the clear ones to your calendar, and seeds your records. A light touch, not a full audit.

5
Build, test, schedule~10 min

Claude generates your brief prompt, runs it live against your real inbox and calendar, shows you the dashboard, writes your project files, and hands you the prompt to schedule.

Your schedule, your rules

Claude asks when each section should run. It does not prescribe times. If meal planning is no use to you, you say so and it is left out. If you are a single adult with no school run, none of that is built. The brief works around your real life.

Troubleshooting

For anything not covered, open the Homebase project and ask Claude directly. Your context is in the project, so it can diagnose most issues without you re-explaining.

The brief did not arrive this morning
Check Keep Awake is on in Cowork, Scheduled tasks. If it was off, Claude Desktop slept before the task ran. This is the usual cause.
The dashboard is not on my phone
Open the Homebase page in the Notion app and pin it to your home screen. The brief always updates that same page, so the link never changes.
A second Homebase page appeared
Tell Claude which page is the real one. It updates that page in place each run and should never create a second. If it did, point it back to the original and it will stop.
An approved calendar change did not run
Confirm the Approve box is ticked in the Notion Approvals database and that Expires is today or later. The next scheduled run processes it from the ledger by stored target. Claude never re-derives the target and never ticks Approve itself.
Notion seems to miss rows
Expected, and handled. Notion search is semantic and silently drops rows, so Homebase reads the Approvals queue from a ledger file by page ID rather than by search. If you add an approval row by hand, the backstop sweep still catches it.
School emails are not being found
Check the sender domain on a recent email, the part after the @. Open the project and tell Claude: School emails come from @domain, please update the brief to include it.
Something in my household changed
Open the project and tell Claude what changed: a new member, a dietary update, a renewal completed, a school. It updates the affected sections and project files. You do not re-run setup.

Check your first meal plan

If you turned on meal planning and declared any allergy, coeliac, or medical rule, eyeball the very first meal plan and grocery list against your own rules before you trust it. Claude applies your safety rules as hard constraints on every meal and will not suggest anything it cannot confirm is safe, but a human sense-check on the first run is the responsible step for anything this important. After that, tell Claude if it ever gets close to a line, and it will tighten the rule.

Sharing this with a friend

Send them two files: this guide and homebase-full-setup.md. Neither contains anyone's personal data. They create their own project, upload the setup file, connect their own accounts, and run the starting prompt. Their household details only ever live in their own project and their own Notion.