The weekly status report, drafted from your calendar, your email and your team chat. 5 sections, every line names its source, and a line with no source doesn't go in. The AI reads for a minute. You spend 9 checking the lines.
Friday, 4pm. You owe your manager the update. So you open the calendar, scroll the sent folder, scroll the team channel, open the tracker, and try to remember what Tuesday was. Most of that hour goes to re-reading, and the re-reading is the part the AI can take.
This prompt makes Claude or ChatGPT your chief of staff for 10 minutes. It reads the week, drafts the report in 5 sections, and puts the source next to every line in brackets: the meeting and the day, the email subject and the day, the channel and the day.
The rule that makes it safe to use: a line with no source doesn't go in. If the AI can't point to where it read something, it can't put it in your report. That one rule is what turns "I don't trust it" into a draft you can check line by line.
The prompt comes in 2 versions below. Which one you use depends on one question: can your AI read your calendar, your mail and your team chat on its own?
Check what your company allows in. Most have a policy, and it's usually "use the assistant we gave you, keep client names and customer data out." If you're not sure, strip client names before you paste and put them back by hand in the finished report. The report is yours and your name goes on it.
Fill in the brackets, paste it into Claude or ChatGPT with your connectors on, and wait about a minute. If it asks you a question before drafting, that's the prompt working. Answer it.
It's Friday and I owe [my manager's name] a status report for [Monday's date] to [Friday's date]. You're my chief of staff. Draft the report from the sources listed at the bottom and nothing else. If you're missing something, ask me before you assume. Format: 5 sections, in this order. 1. Done this week 2. In progress 3. Blocked or needs a decision 4. Next week 5. Needs confirmation Every line names its source in brackets: the meeting title and the day, the email subject and the day, or the channel and the day. After the report, list what you looked for and could not find. Tone: plain and short, written for a busy manager. No adjectives. No status words like "on track" unless I wrote them somewhere you can point to. Non-negotiables: - A line with no source does not go in the report. - If something looks like a decision but was not confirmed in writing, it goes under Needs confirmation, never under Done. - A meeting that was cancelled or moved is not reported as held. - Anything with a future date goes under Next week, not under Done. - If you had to infer a status, say so in brackets. - Never invent progress. Sources you may read: my calendar for those dates, my sent email from the same dates, the [team channel name] thread, and the [tracker name] rows that changed this week. Use only these. [Optional: paste last week's report here so it matches the format your manager already knows.]
Same prompt, same rules. The only change is the bottom: instead of naming what the AI may read, you paste the week in under 5 headings. Keep the headings. The AI uses them to name the source on each line.
Put the day next to every item you paste (Mon, Tue, Wed). Without the day, the AI can't write the source, and a line with no source doesn't go in.
It's Friday and I owe [my manager's name] a status report for [Monday's date] to [Friday's date]. You're my chief of staff. Draft the report from the sources pasted at the bottom and nothing else. If you're missing something, ask me before you assume. Format: 5 sections, in this order. 1. Done this week 2. In progress 3. Blocked or needs a decision 4. Next week 5. Needs confirmation Every line names its source in brackets: the meeting title and the day, the email subject and the day, or the channel and the day. After the report, list what you looked for and could not find. Tone: plain and short, written for a busy manager. No adjectives. No status words like "on track" unless I wrote them somewhere you can point to. Non-negotiables: - A line with no source does not go in the report. - If something looks like a decision but was not confirmed in writing, it goes under Needs confirmation, never under Done. - A meeting that was cancelled or moved is not reported as held. - Anything with a future date goes under Next week, not under Done. - If you had to infer a status, say so in brackets. - Never invent progress. Sources: pasted below. Use only these. CALENDAR (this week's meetings, with the day, and whether each one happened, moved or was cancelled): [paste] SENT EMAIL (subject lines, with the day): [paste] TEAM CHAT (the thread, with names and days): [paste] TRACKER (only the rows that changed this week): [paste] MY NOTES (anything I wrote down myself, with the day): [paste, or delete this heading]
The report reads like a list of facts with receipts. Here's the difference between a line you'd get from a plain "summarize my week" and a line you get from this prompt.
Two adjectives, a status no one wrote down, and nothing your manager can click.
Two facts, two sources, a date. Each one takes you 10 seconds to check.
Someone floated a date in chat. No one confirmed it. Now it's in a report as a decision.
Same fact, in the right section, with the gap named. You decide whether to promote it or ask.
Expect it to be wrong somewhere the first few Fridays. The useful part is that it's wrong in the same 3 places every time, so you know where to look. Each fix below is one line you type back into the chat.
How you spot it: a meeting title you don't recognize, an email subject that doesn't exist, a "Thu" for something that happened Monday. The bracket looks right but the thing inside it is made up. Brackets don't make a line true. Opening the source does.
The fix: make it prove each one. Anything it can't show you gets deleted, and the rule gets tighter.
For every line in the report, quote the exact sentence from the source you named, with the day. If you can't quote it, delete the line and add it to the "could not find" list. Then reprint the report.
How you spot it: "great progress," "on track," "well underway," "positive momentum." Words that sound like status and mean nothing. None of your sources contain them. The AI added them to sound helpful, and a manager reads them as either nothing or a promise you didn't make.
The fix: strip every word that isn't a fact with a source. The prompt already says no adjectives. This makes it go back and enforce it.
Remove every adjective and every status word that doesn't appear in a source ("on track," "good progress," "well underway," and anything like them). Each line should be a fact, a source and a day, nothing else. Reprint the report and tell me which words you cut.
How you spot it: a meeting that was cancelled shows up as held. A task that's on the calendar for next Tuesday shows up under Done this week. A "we should probably" from the team channel shows up as a decision. The AI read about it, so it assumes it happened.
The fix: make it check the tense and the date on every line. Future goes under Next week. Unconfirmed goes under Needs confirmation. Cancelled goes nowhere.
Go through Done this week line by line. For each one, tell me the day it was completed and the source that shows it was completed, not planned. Anything with a future date moves to Next week. Any meeting that was cancelled or moved comes out. Any decision without a written confirmation moves to Needs confirmation. Reprint the report.
The AI read for a minute. These 9 are yours, and they're the reason you can send the report with your name on it. Do them in this order. The source in each bracket tells you where to click.
Ask your manager once. Some want the sources, because they can click straight to the email. Some want a clean report and trust you checked. Either way, the brackets did their job during your 9 minutes. If you take them out, keep a copy with them in for yourself.
The first Friday takes 10 minutes plus some back and forth. The second Friday should take 10 minutes flat, and you shouldn't have to paste the prompt again. So once the report comes out the way you want, save the whole thing under a name.
Turn this into a skill called Friday report. Keep the 5 sections in this order, the source-in-brackets rule, every non-negotiable, the tone, and the list of sources exactly as I gave them. Keep every correction I made to the report today as a rule. When I run it, ask me for the 2 dates first, then draft. Next Friday I'll say "run the Friday report" and I want the same report without explaining any of this again.
If skills are new to you, the 4-word move and where the file lives are on this page.
The saved skill knows the prompt. It doesn't know your manager's format, the words your team never uses, or the corrections you got back on last week's report. After 2 or 3 Fridays you'll see the same fixes repeating. That's the moment to open the skill and put them in for good.
You don't need to be technical for any of it. A skill is a set of instructions in a file called SKILL.md, and you change it by telling Claude what to change, in plain English. Claude does the typing.
Every skill lives in a folder on your computer, inside .claude/skills (personal) or a .claude/skills folder inside a project. Before you change anything, make a copy of that folder. When a skill gets updated, the update overwrites the original and takes your edits with it, with no warning.
Can't find the folder? Ask Claude, "where is this skill saved on my computer?" and it tells you.
Update my Friday report skill so it matches how my team does it. My manager's format: [paste last week's approved report, or describe the headings and the order she wants them in] Corrections I got back last time: [e.g. too long, dates as Tue 2 Sep, she wants the Needs confirmation section in a note to me and not in the report she forwards] Words we never use in a status report: [e.g. on track, great progress, hopefully, ASAP] Where my week lives, by name: [calendar name, mail, the team channel, the tracker] Who reads it: [your manager only, or your manager and her manager] Rewrite the skill so every correction becomes a rule it never breaks. Keep the source-in-brackets rule and the non-negotiables exactly as they are. Tell me in plain English what you changed. Leave the section at the very top between the dashes exactly as it is.
What to tell it