10.3 — Upgrade Your Academic Coach | AI for Real Life

Your Coach is the dashboard's center of gravity. Today we tune it.

If you went through Module 7, you have a Coach Cowork Project somewhere in the Claude Desktop app with at least some of the four staple files in it.

10.3 is the refresh lesson. We'll refresh the four staple files (or finish the ones you skipped), refresh the standing instructions, and run the one-time tuning move that makes a Coach feel tuned instead of generic.

Don't have a Coach Cowork Project yet? Read M7 first

10.3 is a tune-up, not a from-scratch build. The full setup walkthrough is Module 7 (five lessons). If you don't have a Coach Cowork Project at all, pause M10, go finish M7, then come back. Trying to build the Coach from inside M10.3 alone will skip too much context.

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The four staple files (a refresher)

1. Voice Profile (built in M4.4 via the interview prompt). 2. Personal AI Policy (built in M7.2; your bright lines for what you will / won't use AI for). 3. How I Actually Learn (interview from M7.2). 4. Active syllabi (PDFs of every class you're taking this term). Four files, no more, no less. Resist the urge to add a fifth.

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What 10.3 is doing differently from M7.2

Three things: (a) it assumes you already have the files and just need to refresh stale ones; (b) it has you re-run the M7.3 standing-brief language with a tighter Capstone-specific framing; (c) it ends with the workbook tuning panel that becomes piece 2 of your keepsake.

Open your Coach. Audit the four files.

Open the Coach Cowork Project in the Claude Desktop app and look at its context files. We're checking three things per file: does it exist, is it current, and is it the right size? "Right size" matters more than students expect: a Voice Profile that's 11 paragraphs long doesn't make you sound more like you, it just makes it harder for the Coach to lock onto how you actually sound.

The Coach Audit prompt: paste this inside your Coach

Audit the context files in this Project. For each file, tell me: 1. The filename and approximate length (short / medium / long). 2. The last clearly-dated reference inside it (semester name, class code, anything date-stamped). 3. Whether it's currently doing useful work for you when I ask you for help, or whether it feels stale / contradictory / underused. 4. One specific upgrade I could make to it in under 5 minutes that would meaningfully improve your output for me. Then tell me which of the four staple files (Voice Profile, Personal AI Policy, How-I-Learn, Active Syllabi) is missing or weakest, and what I should do about it first. Be specific and direct. Don't say "everything looks great" if it doesn't.

What good audit output looks like

Honest answers like: "Voice Profile is 6 paragraphs, last referenced Fall 2025, probably stale; re-run the M4.4 interview prompt." / "Syllabi includes 4 PDFs, but two are from last term; replace with this term's." / "How-I-Learn is missing entirely; that's the biggest gap; the M7.2 interview prompt won't take long." A Coach that gives you a vague "everything's fine" is itself a sign the Coach hasn't been tuned.

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The syllabus refresh

If you're more than 2 weeks into a new term, your old-term syllabi need to come out and the new-term syllabi need to go in. Old syllabi mention old prof names, old grading weights, old reading lists. Claude will quietly use the wrong info for weeks if you let it. A quick file-upload pass now saves a semester of subtle wrong-class confusion.

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If your Voice Profile is stale, re-run it

Voice changes more than students expect. First-semester-college you sounded different from senior-year-of-HS you, and a Voice Profile from many months ago is probably mostly you and partly who-you-used-to-be. The M4.4 interview prompt is short and worth doing once a year minimum.

Refresh the standing brief.

The standing brief (a.k.a. custom instructions, from M7.3) is the chunk of text Claude reads at the start of every conversation in this Project. It's what makes your Coach feel like your Coach instead of a generic chatbot.

Open Cowork Project settings → Custom Instructions. Paste the Capstone-edition standing brief below, fill the brackets, and save.

The Capstone-edition standing brief: paste this into custom instructions

You are my Personal Academic Coach. I am a [HS junior / HS senior / college freshman / sophomore / junior / senior / grad student] studying [MAJOR or general HS]. My school is [SCHOOL NAME]. This term my classes are: [CLASS LIST WITH PROF NAMES IF KNOWN]. You have access to my Voice Profile, my Personal AI Policy, my How-I-Learn doc, and my active syllabi as Project context files. Read them when relevant. Don't ask me for info that's already in those files. Your six standing orders: 1. **Tone.** Match my Voice Profile. If we're in a study chat, be warm but efficient. Explain things to me, don't lecture me. If we're in a logistics chat, be direct and fast. Never be flowery or chipper. 2. **Format.** Default to plain prose with section headers when I ask for substance, and short numbered steps when I ask for a how-to. No emoji unless I use one first. Mirror my length. If I sent two sentences, don't send eight paragraphs. 3. **Verify habits.** Anything you tell me about a class, a syllabus rule, a deadline, a prof's preferences, or a specific source should be tagged with where the info came from. If you're inferring from general knowledge instead of my Project files, say "[INFERRED, verify]". If you're not sure, say "[UNCERTAIN]" and tell me what to check. 4. **Integrity hard-lines.** Your job is to coach me, not write for me. You can outline, edit, quiz, explain, brainstorm with me, and audit my drafts, but the final version of any submitted work has to be in my voice and my words. Honor my Personal AI Policy file's rules without me having to repeat them. If I ask you to cross a line in my AI Policy, push back once and ask if I really meant it. 5. **Ask before guessing.** When I give you a vague task, ask me at most 2 sharp clarifying questions before producing output. Don't write 1,200 words of generic stuff hoping some of it sticks. 6. **Session close.** When I say "we're done" or the conversation has clearly wrapped, give me a one-line "save this": what to save into my prompt library, what to add to next week's plan, or what to follow up on with a human. When I open a new chat in this Project, briefly orient yourself to which mode of help I'm asking for (study / writing / research / logistics / decision) and proceed in that mode.

The one-time tuning move from M7.3: run it once now

After you save the standing brief, open a fresh chat in your Coach and ask: "Read your custom instructions and tell me, in your own words, what kind of Coach you are for me. Be specific: what would you do differently from a generic chatbot? Where might you get my preferences slightly wrong?" Read the answer carefully. If anything feels off (too formal, missed a class, missed your tone), fix it in the standing brief now. This is the move that makes a Coach feel tuned.

Workbook · your Coach Tuning panel.

Lock in the state of your Coach as of today. Three things to record: which files are in, the version of the standing brief you settled on, and the one-line tuning fix you made after the "what kind of Coach are you" check.

Workbook · Panel 2 of 5

Your Coach Tuning

The four staple files + standing brief + tuning move. Saved here so future-you knows what version is live.

Coach Cowork Project name (exactly as it appears in your Claude sidebar) __________________________________________________________

The four staple files: check what's in ☐ Voice Profile (last refreshed: __________) ☐ Personal AI Policy (last refreshed: __________) ☐ How I Actually Learn doc (last refreshed: __________) ☐ Active syllabi for this term (count: ___ of ___ classes uploaded)

My version of the standing brief: what I changed from the template __________________________________________________________ e.g., "tightened standing order 1 to say 'no exclamation points,'" "added a 7th order about always quizzing me before explaining"

After the "what kind of Coach are you" tuning check, the one fix I made __________________________________________________________

Date this version went live _______________________

If you ever need to go back to the M7.4 maintenance routine ("Add / Remove / Refresh"), this panel is your starting point. You'll know what was in the Coach as of M10 graduation.

📸 Screenshot once filled, piece 2 of your keepsake.

A note on the other two Cowork Projects: Applications and Personal.

Three Cowork Projects total live in your dashboard. The Coach is the one we tuned today. The other two need quick cameos before you move on.

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Applications Cowork Project (from M6.2)

If you built it during M6.2, leave it alone. M6.2 was already explicit about it being a Cowork Project with context files (Application Profile + Stories Bank) and integrity-locked custom instructions. It doesn't need a 10.3 retune. The only M10 thing to do: confirm it still exists and that the most recent semester's resume + activities list are inside it. If you haven't built it yet because you're not in application season, skip. M10 doesn't require the Applications Cowork Project to graduate.

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Personal Cowork Project: set up in 10.5

The third Cowork Project (working name: "Student Life · Personal") is where the prompt library lives and where the few non-academic prompts go (M8 logistics, M8.5 brain-dump, M8.6 big-call thinking-tool). We're not building it in 10.3; that's a 10.5 job. Today, you only need to know it's coming and that it's smaller than the Coach.

Up next: 10.4: Your Three Scheduled Tasks

Coach is tuned. Now we wire up the three scheduled tasks that run on autopilot: Sunday Reset (everyone keeps this one), one Pre-Exam Watch matched to your highest-friction class, and one of the M9.2 variants (Daily Brief, Friday Wind-Down, or App Deadline Tracker; your call). 10.4 is a wiring lesson, not a writing one; the prompts are already in M9.

Continue to 10.4 — Three Scheduled Tasks →