Stop Doing the Donkey Work
You're good at your job. But half your day isn't your job. It's email triage. Task shuffling. Filing documents. Tracking projects. Updating spreadsheets. Scheduling. Following up. The donkey work.
What if you had an assistant that handled all of it?
The Robot Assistant Field Guide teaches you how to build a personal AI assistant that lives on your Mac, knows your projects, and runs your workflows — so you can spend your time on work that actually matters.
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You Already Know the Feeling
You sit down to do real work and spend the first hour sorting email. You open your task manager and spend twenty minutes reorganizing instead of doing. You have a system — maybe several systems — but they all need feeding. Notes here, tasks there, calendar somewhere else, and none of them talk to each other.
You've probably tried AI. Asked ChatGPT a few questions. Maybe had Claude write a draft. It was interesting, but it didn't stick. The next day, it forgot everything. You started over. Again.
The problem isn't the AI. The problem is that a chatbot isn't an assistant. An assistant remembers. An assistant knows your projects, your preferences, your people. An assistant doesn't need to be told the same thing twice.
That's what we're building.
The Solution
Meet Your Robot Assistant
The Robot Assistant is a persistent AI system built on two tools: Obsidian and Claude.
Obsidian is a free, powerful note-taking app that stores everything as plain text files on your Mac. Claude is an AI assistant from Anthropic that can read, write, and manage those files. Together, they become something neither can be alone: a personal assistant that actually knows your life.
Here's what a morning looks like with a working robot assistant:
You sit down and say "briefing." Your assistant checks your calendar, scans your email for anything urgent, reviews your active projects, and gives you a rundown of the day. You work through your tasks — your assistant tracks what's done. At shutdown, it reviews what happened, surfaces what needs attention tomorrow, and logs a journal entry. The planning and tracking that used to eat your evenings? Handled.
But it goes further. The system processes your email and routes things to the right place. It manages tasks without the busywork of traditional task managers. It tracks your projects, your contacts, your recurring responsibilities. It drafts replies in your voice. It remembers what you told it three weeks ago about that contractor invoice.
And because everything is stored as plain text files on your Mac, you own all of it. No subscription lock-in. No cloud dependency. No wondering what happens to your data if a company shuts down.
WHY NOW
The Early Adopter Advantage
AI-powered personal assistants that manage your files, your tasks, and your workflows are going to be common. That's not a prediction — it's a trajectory. The tools are here. The capability is here. Most people just haven't figured out how to put the pieces together yet.
The people who build these systems now will have a tremendous advantage. They'll understand how to work with AI in ways that most people won't figure out for years. They'll have systems that are already trained, already refined, already handling real work — while everyone else is still asking chatbots trivia questions.
The Robot Assistant Field Guide is for people who want that advantage now.
WHAT YOU'LL BUILD
A System, Not a Toy
This isn't a weekend hack. By the end of the Field Guide, you'll have a working assistant that handles real work:
Morning Briefings
Start every day with a clear picture of what's on deck — calendar, tasks, email, projects — without opening six apps.
Email Processing
Your assistant triages your inbox, drafts replies in your voice, flags what needs your attention, and files the rest.
Task Management Without the Busywork
No more dragging tasks between columns or reorganizing lists. Tell your assistant what needs doing and it tracks everything — including the stuff that repeats weekly, monthly, and quarterly.
Document Filing
Drop scanned PDFs into a folder. Your assistant reads them, names them properly, and files them in the right place. Automatically.
Project Tracking
Your assistant knows your active projects, their status, and what's next. Ask for an update and get one — across everything you're working on.
Weekly Reviews That Actually Happen
Your assistant gathers the data, walks you through the review, and produces a plan for next week. The part that used to take an hour takes fifteen minutes.
And More
Content pipelines. Contact management. Customer service workflows. Sponsor tracking. The system grows with you.
WHO THIS IS FOR
You Might Be a Good Fit If...
You probably have some kind of productivity system, even if it's imperfect. Maybe you've tried AI chatbots and found them interesting but not useful for your actual daily work.
You're skeptical of the hype but open to practical applications. You value control over your data and prefer tools that work locally on your machine. You're willing to invest time upfront to build something that pays dividends for years.
You don't need to be a programmer. You don't need a technical background. If you can organize files into folders, you can build this system.
WHO THIS IS NOT FOR
Robot Assistants are great, but you still need to be the human in the loop. This system handles the donkey work. The repetitive, tedious, time-consuming tasks that eat your day. Email triage. File management. Task tracking. Scheduling. Data entry. The grunt work.
The goal is liberation from that stuff so you have more time and energy for the work that only you can do. The creative work. The strategic thinking. The relationship building. The things a machine shouldn't do for you.
We build assistants for the tedious stuff, not replacements for the meaningful stuff.
Example Curriculum
- What Your Robot Assistant Can Do (10:20)
- How Your Robot Assistant Thinks (11:30)
- Setting Up Claude Cowork (17:18)
- Your Robot's First Skills (21:39)
- The Skill Index (9:09)
- Conecting to Your World (20:28)
- Building Workflows (8:31)
- Automating FIle Naming and Folder Structure
- Robot File Management (8:59)
- Maintaining Your Robot (12:53)
- MacSparky's Robot, Deployed (48:47)
- Workshop 1 — Getting Real
- Workshop 2 — Email Processing
- Workshop 3 — Calendar and Daily Planning
- Workshop 4 — Task Management
- Workshop 5 — The Personal CRM
- Workshop 6 — Review Cadences
- Workshop 7 — Content Workflows
- Workshop 8 — Integrations and Automation
- Workshop 9 — Building Your Own Skills
- Workshop 10 — Spotlight and Q&A
Your Donkey Work Isn't Going to Do Itself
Actually, that's exactly the point. It can.
You just need to build the system. The Robot Assistant Field Guide shows you how.
FAQ
Do I need to know how to code?
No. The entire system is built through natural language instructions and plain text files. If you can write a sentence and organize files into folders, you have all the technical skill you need.
What software do I need?
A computer, Obsidian (free), and Claude (requires a subscription from Anthropic). The Field Guide walks you through setting everything up.
What if I already use Obsidian?
Great — you're ahead of the game. The foundation videos cover setup for beginners, but the skills and workflows will be new territory even for experienced Obsidian users.
What if I've never used Obsidian?
That's fine. Video 3 covers installation and setup from scratch. Many of the best students will be starting fresh.
How long until I have a working system?
By the end of the 10 foundation videos (~2.5 hours), you'll have a functional robot assistant. The workshop series takes it deeper over the following weeks.
What if I can't make the live workshops?
Every workshop is recorded and available on Teachable. Work through them at your own pace.
Is my data safe? Does it go to the cloud?
Your files stay on your Mac in plain text. Nothing is uploaded to any cloud service. When you interact with Claude, your conversation goes to Anthropic's servers (as with any AI tool), but your vault files remain local.
Can I use this system on iPad or iPhone?
The robot assistant is built on Claude's Cowork mode, which currently runs on computer. You can access your Obsidian vault on iOS for reading and editing, but the AI assistant features require your computer.
What if AI changes significantly during the course?
That's what the live workshops are for. The curriculum adapts to new developments. The principles — structured instructions, plain text, local data — will remain relevant regardless of which AI model you use.
I already use OmniFocus / Things / Todoist. Do I need to switch?
You don't have to, but the Field Guide teaches a task management approach built into the robot assistant system. Many people find it replaces their standalone task manager. The workshops will help you decide what works best for your setup.
