I built a thing (with AI), part 2: How I built it

This is part 2 in my “I built a thing (with AI)” series that details building my new, completely AI-generated One Idea Per Day Substack. You can find part 1 (what I built) here for more background details on the Substack / project.

So let’s start with the basics. I built the whole One Idea Per Day Substack with Claude Cowork; if you haven’t started using it yet, I’d highly encourage you to do it as it’s really easy to use (no coding background required!) and I think it will really blow your mind once you start using it (here’s a very basic Cowork overview if you haven’t picked it up yet).

What I really wanted to build was a Substack that could run fully hands off, but with the option for me to lightly nudge it or provide input over time if I wanted to tilt it in a different direction.

Below, I’m going to provide a ton of screenshots of exactly what I told Cowork to get this project up and running. If you’re already super familiar with using Cowork, this might be boring or look simple to you (if you’ve got feedback on prompting and the like, I’m always open!). But, if you haven’t used Cowork or are just starting to dabble, I suspect a lot of this will be eye-opening to you. If I had to give you just one piece of advice for using Cowork to build interesting projects, it would be this: just start using it. Think of something that would be useful, ask Cowork to do it, and iterate with it back and forth until the task is complete.

In fact, that was the whole point of this project: I wanted to play around with AI to continue to test how easily you could spin up unique projects. The new Substack is fun on its own, but the bigger reason I built it is that it’s an easily shareable example of what’s possible; I’ve been using the exact same approach to build research and portfolio management tools for myself (and many of those aren’t as easy to share for a bunch of reasons!).

Basics out of the way, let’s turn to actually building the project. I started by opening a new Cowork project called “idea per day substack”:

Here’s what the instruction looked like to begin with, as well as my first prompt:

After my first prompt, Cowork asked me a few questions, including how hands off I wanted to be (answer: extremely!):

As we went through the project, I slightly modified it to allow for a little more input on my end if I wanted to tilt the project a little:

From there, it was just a lot of iteration. For example, I gave it rules on what ideas to use and to avoid repeating ideas:

And I had it build disclaimer and about pages:

I asked it for ways to incorporate reader feedback:

And, recently, when I thought the ideas were getting too focused on vanilla merger arb, I gave it a course correction:

All in, the project took an afternoon to set up, and there’s no real ongoing cost or time spend on my end (I’ll read a write up if the name interests me, and every now and then drift in to make sure everything’s working properly…. but other than that I’m totally hands off!).

If you've used Cowork to build something interesting or you've got better prompting ideas than what's in those screenshots, my emails are always open!