Workshop 4 Intermediate 90 min

Build and Automate

Create your own skill, schedule it, and chain it into a pipeline that runs without you

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Workshop 4: Build and Automate illustration
1

Promise Check-In

Quick show of hands

2 min

Promise Check-In

2 min

Quick show of hands. Who processed their real pile from Workshop 3? Not the workshop data — the actual Monday morning backlog.

What surprised you? Did real data surface problems that workshop data did not? Did anyone share their output with a colleague or manager?

Two sentences max. The pattern we are listening for: real data is messier than workshop data, but the process still works. If your output had errors you caught during review, that is the verification habit forming.

2

From Consumer to Creator

Intro

The best skills are not the most complex ones. They are the ones that eliminate a specific 15-30 min

3 min

From Consumer to Creator

3 min
The best skills are not the most complex ones. They are the ones that eliminate a specific 15-30 minute task that you do every single week. Fifteen minutes of saved time, 50 weeks per year, is 12.5 hours reclaimed.

For three workshops, you have been using skills that someone else built. Every skill you have used was written by someone who had a repetitive task and decided to never do it manually again. Not an engineer. Not a developer. Someone like you.

The facilitator shows a custom skill they built for their own workflow. It took 15 minutes to create. It runs every morning at 7am. They have not done this task manually in 3 weeks.

Workshops 1-3, you were a consumer. Today, you become a creator.

3

Build Your Skill

Try It

Hands-on challenge

25 min
CHALLENGE

The Task

Build a real skill for a real task from your actual workflow using /skill-creator.

4

Scheduled Tasks

Step-by-Step

A skill you have to remember to run is useful

15 min

Scheduled Tasks

15 min

A skill you have to remember to run is useful. A skill that runs itself is powerful. Scheduled tasks let Cowork run prompts at defined times automatically.

5

Dispatch

Step-by-Step

4 steps to complete

10 min

Dispatch

10 min
0/4 steps complete
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6

Chain It

Exercise

Hands-on practice with role-specific prompts

15 min

Chain It

15 min

Connect your custom skill with verification and publishing into a three-step automation chain.

7

Stress Test

Feed your custom skill deliberately messy data to find how it fails before Monday.

10 min

Stress Test

10 min

Feed your custom skill deliberately messy data to find how it fails before Monday.

8

Skill Swap

Exercise

Hands-on practice with role-specific prompts

7 min

Skill Swap

7 min

Share your skill with someone from a different department. Test whether it is documented well enough for someone else to use.

9

Monday Promise

Two-part promise this week

5 min

Monday Promise

5 min

Two-part promise this week. Part 1: your custom skill runs on real data. Part 2: your scheduled tasks fire overnight.

Steal This Prompt

Copy these prompts, customize the file paths to match your workspace, and use them in Cowork. Replace ~ with your actual home directory path if needed.

Build a Custom Skill

I have a task I do every week that takes about 30 minutes. Help me build a Cowork skill that automates it. I will descri...
Show full prompt▼ 
I have a task I do every week that takes about 30 minutes.
Help me build a Cowork skill that automates it.
I will describe the task, input data, and expected output.
Use /skill-creator to generate the skill definition.
5 min with Cowork · 30 min manually

Weekly Case Summary Skill

Build a skill that runs every Monday at 7am. It should: 1. Read all cases updated in the past 7 days from Jira 2. Group ...
Show full prompt▼ 
Build a skill that runs every Monday at 7am.
It should:
1. Read all cases updated in the past 7 days from Jira
2. Group by scheme (Visa, Mastercard, AMEX)
3. Calculate approaching deadlines (< 7 days warning, < 3 days critical)
4. Produce a Word document (.docx) summary with deadline warnings
5. If any case is < 3 days from deadline, flag as CRITICAL in the summary
Use /skill-creator to build the skill definition.
0 min (automated) with Cowork · 30 min/week manually

Daily Settlement Check Skill

Build a skill that runs every morning at 8am. It should: 1. Check for new settlement files in the workspace 2. Run a qui...
Show full prompt▼ 
Build a skill that runs every morning at 8am.
It should:
1. Check for new settlement files in the workspace
2. Run a quick reconciliation against the internal ledger
3. Flag any discrepancies > 500
4. Produce a brief summary (.docx) — green if clean, yellow if minor issues, red if critical
5. Save to workspace with today's date in filename
Use /skill-creator to build the skill definition.
0 min (automated) with Cowork · 60 min/day manually

Schedule the Skill

Take the skill we just built and turn it into a scheduled task. Run it every weekday at 7am. Save the output in my works...
Show full prompt▼ 
Take the skill we just built and turn it into a scheduled task.
Run it every weekday at 7am.
Save the output in my workspace with today's date in the filename.
If any required input is missing, stop and explain what needs fixing.
5 min with Cowork · 20 min manually

Verification Wrapper

Wrap my custom skill in a verification step. After the skill finishes, run a short review checklist that confirms the ou...
Show full prompt▼ 
Wrap my custom skill in a verification step.
After the skill finishes, run a short review checklist that confirms the output is complete, internally consistent, and safe to share.
Return both the output and the checklist result.
5 min with Cowork · 25 min manually

Dispatch Brief

Design a Dispatch-friendly version of my automation. It should accept a short text request from my phone, run the skill,...
Show full prompt▼ 
Design a Dispatch-friendly version of my automation.
It should accept a short text request from my phone, run the skill, and return a clean summary plus one clear next action.
5 min with Cowork · 20 min manually

Key Takeaways

  1. Build a custom skill from scratch using /skill-creator that automates a real, recurring task from your personal workflow

  2. Set up scheduled tasks that run automatically on a daily or weekly cadence with safety gates and monitoring

  3. Understand Dispatch for sending tasks from your phone and receiving results on your desktop

Materials

Download these files to use with the exercises above. Previews load automatically.

← Previous Workshop 3: Your Department's Worst Day Process the Monday-after-a-bank-holiday pile in minutes, not hours Next → Workshop 5: Full Stack Wire everything together into a morning dashboard that runs before you sit down