First Three Workflows + Maintenance + Stop Signs
Setup is done. Now you actually use it.
Coach has knowledge (4 files) and instructions (6 standing orders). Time to run real workflows. Three today: chosen because together they cover most of what you'll use the Coach for, all year. After the workflows, two short panels you'll come back to: the Sunday refresh ritual that keeps your Coach from going stale, and the four times to spin up a plain chat instead.
The three workflows we're running
- Workflow 1 · The Study Session: for an upcoming test or quiz. Pulls Module 3.3 (Active Recall Engine) + 3.4 (Explain It Back) into your Coach.
- Workflow 2 · The Paper Start: when a writing assignment lands and you have no idea where to begin. Pulls Module 4.3 (Brainstorm & Outline) into your Coach.
- Workflow 3 · The Sunday Weekly Planner: a ritual that turns "I'm overwhelmed" into "here's what I'm doing tonight." New for Module 7.
Inside the Cowork Project, not outside
Make sure each chat is started inside your Coach Cowork Project: not from the main Claude home page. Visual cue: you should see your Cowork Project name at the top and your context files listed when you start a new chat.
Workflow 1: The Study Session.
Pick a real upcoming test/quiz. Open new chat in your Coach Cowork Project. Paste this prompt.
What you didn't have to type
- Your tone preference: already in custom instructions.
- The Module 3.3/3.4 study pattern (gap-find, explain-back, mini-quiz): in the prompt, but easy because the Coach already knows how you learn.
- The class context: you named the class; the Coach pulled the syllabus you uploaded in 7.2.
- The integrity rules: you didn't have to remind it not to spoon-feed answers; standing order 4 already does that.
The first time the syllabus quote lands, you'll feel it
Watch for the Coach quoting from your uploaded syllabus when answering "what's covered." If it does, the Cowork Project is working. If it doesn't: generic guess: your syllabus didn't upload cleanly. Re-upload as PDF, retry. (Lesson 1.2 reality check: PDFs work, audio files don't.)
Workflow 2: The Paper Start.
Pick a real writing assignment that's coming up. (If you don't have one this week, run on the next one.)
What's different from running this in a plain chat
- Your voice profile is already in play. The 4 questions sound like questions someone who knows you would ask.
- The "stop at the outline" rule is enforceable. Standing order 4 already drew that line. If you slip and ask "could you just draft the intro," the Coach refuses: that's the integrity infrastructure working.
- Your class context is loaded. If your syllabus says "papers in this class are graded on argument, not summary," your Coach pulls that.
The Lesson 4.5 process trail still applies
Even though you're in a Cowork Project now, keep the five-file process folder for graded papers (the trail-completion ritual from Lesson 4.5). The Cowork Project gives you ergonomics; the folder gives you defensibility. Save the brainstorm chat as part of your trail when this paper goes to a grade.
Workflow 3: The Sunday Weekly Planner.
New. A ritual you'll run every Sunday for the rest of the semester.
Why the Sunday planner matters
- It compounds. Every Sunday's plan starts from last Sunday's "what got dropped":your Coach builds week-over-week awareness as long as you keep running it.
- It catches the things you avoid. The "one thing you're most likely to avoid" question pulls from your How I Learn doc's "known bad habits" section: your Coach uses what you told it to predict your slip.
- It produces tonight's first move. "Starter prompt for tonight" means you don't close the planning chat and then sit on the couch.
Name your chats: Lesson 1.2 hygiene applied
Each workflow is a separate chat inside the Cowork Project. Rename it right away: "Sunday plan: wk of [date]," "Bio midterm prep," "Lit paper outline." Cowork-Project-internal chats live in their own list: same hygiene rule from 1.2 still wins.
Plain chat (pre-Module 7)
Steps to run a study session: open chat → paste voice profile → re-explain class → re-state how you learn → remind it not to spoon-feed → THEN ask for the study session.
Several minutes of context-pasting before the actual learning starts. Multiply by every chat, all semester.
Coach Cowork Project (post-Module 7)
Steps to run a study session: open new chat in Coach → paste the study session prompt → start.
No context-pasting. The minutes you'd have spent re-briefing become minutes of actual studying instead.
Don't go stale: the Sunday refresh.
You set up your Coach in week 1. By week 6, it's running on the syllabi from week 1. Bio prof shifted a midterm and added a chapter. Lit class swapped a reading. You started a part-time job that ate Tuesday nights. None of that updated automatically. Coach is now subtly wrong about your life: and the more wrong it is, the less useful.
Every Sunday, when you're already running the weekly planner workflow above, tack a quick maintenance pass on at the end.
The 3 maintenance moments
- Add: when something new lands (date change, extra reading, syllabus revision, personal-rule update).
- Remove: when something becomes noise (wrapped class, outdated assignment, tone preference no longer you).
- Refresh: at end of every semester. Wholesale rebuild for the new term, on purpose. (See the end-of-semester archive note below.)
The maintenance flow when something changes
- For a syllabus change: open the syllabus file outside Claude (Notes or Drive), edit the changed line, save, re-upload to Coach knowledge (replace the old file).
- For a "How I Learn" update: add to the bottom with a date. Old self-knowledge stays; new self-knowledge layers on. Re-upload.
- For an AI Policy change: update the file, re-upload. The instruction "read my AI Policy file" in custom instructions does the rest.
- For a custom instructions tune: edit the one line in the Cowork Project's instructions box that needs to change. Don't rewrite the whole block.
End-of-semester refresh: twice a year
- 1 · Rename the current Cowork Project to "S26 Coach: archived" (or similar). Don't delete: old chats might be useful (looking up "how did I plan the lit paper last semester").
- 2 · Create a new Cowork Project named "Personal Academic Coach:[your name]" for the new term.
- 3 · Copy your custom instructions from old → new: but read once first to see if anything's stale (tone preference, "never do this to me" line, AI Policy reference).
- 4 · Upload the four files fresh: latest Voice Profile (re-do Lesson 4.4 if it's been a year: your voice drifts), updated AI Policy with new term's per-class rules, updated How I Learn doc (run the 7.2 interview again: it's faster the second time), and the new term's syllabi.
- 5 · Run the tone-check prompt from 7.3 in the new Cowork Project to confirm everything carried over right.
Three traps to actively avoid
Knowledge bloat: "Just one more file" syndrome. Every chapter PDF, every note set, every paper draft, dumped into the Coach. Eventually the Coach can't see your core knowledge through the noise. Rule of thumb: if a file is for one specific chat (today's lecture slides, this week's reading), upload to that chat: not to the Cowork Project.
Instruction creep: every time the Coach does something you didn't love, you add a new line. Six weeks in, instructions are 1,200 words, contradictory, and the Coach hedges on every reply. Rule of thumb: if you want to change behavior, edit an existing line: don't add a new one. If your instructions are over ~500 words, prune.
The "set it and forget it" trap: Set up Coach in week 1, never update, by week 10 you've lost trust because the Coach keeps citing wrong dates. The Sunday refresh is the antidote.
Stale knowledge is the integrity risk hiding inside the convenience
Honest Work Code · Rules 2 & 3. The Coach is a confidence machine. When it cites your syllabus, you trust it. When it tags a deadline as [CONFIDENT], you stop double-checking. That trust is exactly the thing that hurts you when the underlying knowledge is wrong: you ride a wrong date all the way to a missed deadline, you skip a reading the syllabus actually moved, you submit a paper to the wrong rubric because you're working off the August version. Your work survives scrutiny (Rule 2) and respects the rules of the room (Rule 3) only if the Coach's knowledge is current. The Sunday refresh isn't optional polish: it's the integrity practice that keeps the Coach from quietly becoming a beautifully written confidence trap. Set a recurring reminder for Sunday evenings. The week you skip it is the week the Coach starts lying with conviction.
Stop signs: when NOT to use the Coach.
Reflex from here will be: every chat goes in the Coach. Not quite right. Most of the time the Coach is the right home; some of the time, a fresh plain chat is better: and being able to tell which is which is what makes you sharp at this.
The 4 times to spin up a plain chat instead
- 1 · One-off task with no context overlap. Random fact-check. Quick translation. Weird email to someone you'll never email again.
- 2 · Sensitive personal stuff that doesn't belong in your Coach. Mental health. Family conflict. Medical. Money worries. The dorm-door rule from Lesson 1.4 still applies: don't mix highly personal context into your standing academic Cowork Project. A one-off chat (or temporary chat in incognito mode from Lesson 1.4) is the right home.
- 3 · Group work where someone else needs to see the chat. The Coach is yours. Its knowledge is your private context. If brainstorming with a study group or a project partner who needs to read the chat, you don't want your How I Learn doc and AI Policy bleeding into a shared work session. Plain chat, share the link, keep the Coach private.
- 4 · The Coach is being weird and you suspect drift. If a Coach chat is acting "off" in a way Lesson 2.3's four-signs check doesn't fully explain, sometimes the issue is a context file that needs re-uploading or an instruction contradicting itself. Spinning up a plain chat to re-test "is this the Coach or is this Claude in general?" is a useful debug move. Then go fix the Coach.
Academic, recurring, or class-related?
Studying, papers, planning, anything tied to syllabi or How I Learn:Coach Project. If it's a workflow you'll run again next week or next month, default to Coach. Reusability is the strongest signal.
Sensitive, personal, or someone else's?
Mental health, money, family, group work, anyone else's content:plain chat (or temporary chat from 1.4 if extra-sensitive). The Coach's standing brief shouldn't shape conversations that aren't really about your school work.
A throwaway one-off?
Quick fact-check, weird translation, "what's the past tense of this verb in Spanish":plain chat. The Coach can handle these, but it's overhead.
Coming next: 7.5: Voice Mode on Phone
Your Coach lives on your laptop. But you have 7 minutes walking to chem class and zero hands free. Next: how to use voice mode on your phone and bring the conversation back to your Coach when you're at your laptop.
Continue to Lesson 7.5 →