You’ve built a successful newsletter, but now life’s getting busier after your 50th issue. Whether it’s a move, new baby, or sponsorship commitments, you’re finding it’s challenging to keep the quality up without burning out. This is where copilots come in — AI partners that transform how we tackle work. Give it the right base of knowledge and you can create a personalized thought partners that understands your context, style, and goals.
I'll share three specific copilots I've built in Claude Projects and how you can create your own - I’m a big believer they can improve your productivity and thinking.
Why Copilots Matter
In a world where time is precious and demands keep increasing, copilots offer a remarkable solution. These AI assistants seamlessly integrate into your workflow, enhancing everything from decision-making to creative output.
What makes these models truly powerful is the added context. By providing your projects with examples of what's good and bad in your eyes, you transform them into remarkably effective thought partners that can challenge your biases and provide valuable insights from any perspective. Claude Projects work through a technique called Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), which trains the model based on documentation you provide.
The result? You free up time for what truly matters while accelerating your best thinking at a level of quality you’re proud of.
Three Game-Changing Copilots
Interview Prep Copilot
This copilot helps me prepare for behavioral and technical interviews by understanding my background and popular tactics. It understands company dynamics and can generate relevant practice questions that match specific roles.
Setup:
- Add your resume and LinkedIn profile (exported to PDF).
- Create a bank of interview questions from resources like Exponent or Indeed.
- Add questions, answers, notes, or reflections from past interviews.
- Describe core concepts or approaches to certain types of interview questions
Project Instructions:
1. Analyze resume and job descriptions 2. Generate role-specific technical questions 3. Provide feedback on answers 4. Suggest areas for deeper preparation
Personal Impact: This has helped me prep for interviews faster and led to job offers at big and small tech companies. You can cater it to help you at any level. It improves question thinking, response structure, and exposes me to greater question variety. I've found that Claude typically prepares me for harder interviews than I actually face—which means I walk in feeling confident. Its ability to simulate conversations when provided with enough background helps quell nerves in high-stress situations and prepares me to speak more fluidly, presenting my best self.
Writing Copilot
This copilot strengthens ideas and critiques my writing with my authentic voice. I often use several chats for the same topic - starting with feedback on an idea in rough form, writing flow when it’s in mid form, and edits for those final touches.
Setup:
- Upload your best writing samples
- Include descriptions of your vibe, style, and tone
- Add examples of great essays in your niche
Project Instructions:
1. Study writing style and tone 2. Generate drafts that match voice 3. Provide editorial suggestions 4. Help with structure and flow
Personal Impact: This has significantly strengthened my essays by highlighting what's entertaining and what's not. It's particularly useful for identifying gaps in my writing or examining it from a contrarian viewpoint. Knowing my tone and presentation preferences, the copilot helps ensure my essays feel complete with natural flow while delivering valuable information.
Warren Buffett Copilot
This copilot applies Warren Buffett's investment principles to analyze stocks and develop long-term investment strategies.
Setup:
- Berkshire Hathaway chairman letters
- Buffett's investment philosophy documentation
- Key interviews and speeches
- Resources that influenced Buffett (e.g., The Intelligent Investor)
- Investment criteria documentation
- Historical analysis examples
Project Instructions:
1. Analyze companies using Buffett's criteria 2. Evaluate competitive advantages 3. Assess management quality 4. Consider long-term growth potential
Personal Impact: Beyond Buffett's general lessons about life and strategic thinking, I've included market financial data and analysis within this copilot. This has been extremely helpful when evaluating individual stocks. By providing recent news and market data, I leverage the copilot as an additional financial analyst that offers succinct observations, pros and cons. While you shouldn't trust it blindly for financial advice, it serves as a valuable thought partner when considering investment decisions.
Building Your Own Copilot
Here's my step-by-step process for creating effective copilots with Claude Projects:
Log into Claude, upgrade to pro, then create a project.
1. Define What You're Trying to Do
I like to write out my idea to force deeper thinking. Sometimes when I'm stuck, I’ll use ChatGPT's voice assistant to talk through ideas and shape what the copilot could do.
Ask yourself:
- What am I trying to do faster or think bigger about?
- What does that workflow look like today?
- What does a great output look like? What’s “meh”?
2. Gather Your Project's Knowledge Base
Start by collecting relevant materials:
- Personal notes: Insights from things you've read or heard that might be relevant
- Your own examples: For writing copilots, include samples you're most proud of
- External examples: Find "10/10" examples of what you're trying to create
- Contextual descriptions: Use other GenAI tools to help describe vibes, styles, or approaches
Pro tip: Claude can't interpret images in project knowledge, so describe them rather than including them. It will, however, interpret PDFs.
3. Prompt Engineer Your Instructions
With your knowledge base included, you have two options:
- Add system-level instructions that apply every time
- Leave it open and use specific prompts in each chat
Either way, Claude leverages all materials you've provided to the project.
I'm constantly iterating on prompts, but one useful technique is instructing Claude to skip explanations. For example:
- "Just provide a list of headings I should use for the newsletter. Nothing else."
- "For every idea you have, provide five variations."
Anthropic's Developer tool can help structure your prompts. Keep your prompts in a database (like Notion) where you can reference and reuse them.
Focus on creating:
- Clear project instructions
- Specific steps or workflows
- Example inputs and outputs
- Constraints or cautions for the model
4. Use It and Improve It
Don't spend too much time perfecting your copilot before trying it. You'd be surprised what you can achieve with just a few uploaded files. They can dramatically influence outputs and shape the tone to match what you're looking for.
Try simple prompts like: "Talk to me like Charlie Munger and give me 10 ways I could improve my life over the next year."
Iterate as you discover limitations or biases. You can even ask the model to critique itself: "What do you think is your bias and how would you address it?"
While my examples use static information, what makes projects truly powerful is dynamic integration. Connect to Google Drive to continuously update your knowledge base with customer data or trending social media posts. With its GitHub integration, your project knowledge could include your entire codebase.
The key is being thoughtful about what context you provide and how you structure instructions. The goal isn't to replace your thinking but to accelerate it while maintaining your high bar for quality.
Future Trends in Copilot Evolution
As AI technology advances, we're seeing more consumer and enterprise-ready AI agents. While RAG frameworks are becoming mainstream, emerging tools like Agentic Document Extraction are enabling more sophisticated applications.
These advancements could render copilots and similar manually-assisted processes obsolete. However, understanding and experimenting with these tools now will help enforce your mental model for building agentic systems in the future.
Claude is my personal favorite, but “project” alternatives exist — ChatGPT Projects and Gemini Gems offer similar functionality. For front-end scaffolding, v0 also has a project feature that works similarly.
By leveraging these tools as extensions of your current capabilities, you can better prepare for the next wave of breakthrough and expand your potential today.
Your AI Copilots Await
Copilots don't replace your thinking—they enhance it. They can free you from routine tasks, accelerate your work, and help maintain quality even when life gets busy. Whether you're preparing for interviews, creating content, or planning ahead, these personalized AI partners can transform your productivity.
Get started on your own or give the step-by-step approach I've outlined a try. This AI tooling is accessible, the setup is straightforward, and the benefits are immediate. Build one and take it from there.