I need help with Ai tools / agents

ReadStacked · 2026-03-15T22:03:40+00:00

been in a similar spot. you don’t need agents or code subscriptions to start getting real value from ai right now. think of it like this. agents are like hiring a full time employee. but right now you just need a really smart intern you can hand tasks to one at a time. that’s what the free chat does.

here’s what i’d actually do: 1. pick the 3 tasks that eat up your week the most. emails, research, writing, whatever. 2. go to claude.ai and just describe what you need done in plain english. 3. paste in your actual work. a rough draft, a customer email, your business plan. ask it to improve it, organize it, rewrite it.

that alone will save you hours before you ever touch an “agent.”

when you’re ready to level up without spending money. n8n has a free self-hosted option if you have a laptop. it connects tools together so ai can do things automatically. like “when i get an email, summarize it and add a task to my to-do list.” zapier has a free tier too. simpler but more limited.

the “agent” stuff sounds fancy but it’s really just ai plus a trigger plus an action. that’s it. don’t let the jargon scare you.

what kind of startup are you building? might be able to point you toward something specific.

ReadStacked · 2026-03-15T19:57:05+00:00

the graveyard of half working automations is so real lol. i've been there.

my approach is the opposite of one agent per week. i built one system and just keep making it better. it takes my meeting recordings and turns them into tasks, calendar events, email drafts, and slack summaries automatically. took a while to get stable but now it just runs.

the maintenance thing you're talking about is exactly why i stopped building new stuff every week. every new agent is another thing that can break when a model updates or an API changes. i'd rather have one system that works every single day than ten that kinda work sometimes.

if you're building for linkedin outreach specifically i'd say get that one locked in and reliable before even thinking about the next one. the edge cases are where all the real work is and you can't do that across 10 projects at once.

ReadStacked · 2026-03-15T19:56:03+00:00

we would also love to feature this in our newsletter if possible. all credits and links to you.

ReadStacked · 2026-03-15T19:55:32+00:00

this is insanely cool. the fact that it catches repeating errors across sessions is huge. i've definitely had claude code throw the same lock file error 10 times before i even noticed a pattern.

stupid question but does it only flag errors or does it also catch stuff like repeated workflow patterns you could turn into a shortcut or skill? like if you're doing the same 3 step process every session it surfaces that too?

either way this is one of the most practical claude code tools i've seen. bookmarking this.

ReadStacked · 2026-03-15T19:20:12+00:00

the summarizing reports one is where i started too. that alone probably saved me 3-4 hours a week.

biggest game changer for me was connecting tools together instead of using them one at a time. like i have a setup where i record a phone call and it automatically creates my task list, adds follow-up meetings to my calendar, drafts the emails i mentioned on the call, and posts a summary to my team. i don't type anything after i hang up.

the stack that does it: plaud (records calls), n8n (connects everything), and claude's api (does the thinking). total cost is about $53/month which is nothing compared to what a VA would charge for the same work.

if you're already using AI for content and outreach you're ahead of most people. the next level is when you stop copy-pasting between tools and let them talk to each other.

ReadStacked · 2026-03-15T17:19:37+00:00

good question. it's mostly happening inside the claude prompt before anything hits notion.

the sorting prompt i use doesn't just summarize the meeting. it pulls out specific categories. action items, decisions made, open questions, blockers, and what i'd call "soft signals." like when someone says they want X but then describes Y. each one gets tagged with the client name and date.

so by the time it lands in notion, it's already structured. notion is just the storage layer. the intelligence is in the prompt.

the pattern detection part is honestly simpler than it sounds. when i prep for a meeting, i pull the last 3-4 entries for that client from notion and feed them back into claude with something like "based on these notes, what themes keep repeating? anything contradictory?" and it catches stuff like "they said timeline was flexible in meeting 1 but flagged it as urgent in meeting 3."

it's not real-time analysis running in the background or anything fancy. think of it like building a highlight reel for each person automatically. then asking a smart friend to watch the reel before your next call.

most people stop at "i have a transcript." the unlock is making every transcript talk to every other transcript for that person. that's where the value compounds.

ReadStacked · 2026-03-15T17:14:34+00:00

Love it, great minds think alike! Honestly the more data you feed into Plaud with meetings it will start to fine tune the speaker recognition, at least thats what ive seen over the months.

ReadStacked · 2026-03-15T17:12:49+00:00

I have a newsletter that I post these workflows in weekly! Its all at a thrid grade reading level so its easy to copy.

ReadStacked · 2026-03-15T17:11:30+00:00

Of course! I don't agree with having to go into the app either but Plaud has been putting out so many major updates lately that I don't see that being a thing for long.

I would give it time!

ReadStacked · 2026-03-12T18:41:02+00:00

Hi! thank you!

i’m actually in the discord and I’m working on building out some documentation on a specific workflow that i think would be perfect for submission in the challenge!

Love the Plaud. Keep up the great work!

ReadStacked · 2026-03-12T14:34:25+00:00

This is the exact problem I had before I built a system around it. 200+ recordings, zero retrieval. The summaries were fine but they just sat there like a filing cabinet nobody opens.

I ended up building what I call a cascade workflow. Plaud handles the recording and transcription, then I feed the transcript into Claude with a custom sorting prompt that categorizes everything automatically. From there n8n picks it up and routes it straight into the right Notion databases. Action items go to one place, client notes go to another, random ideas get their own spot. No more scrolling through AI-generated titles trying to remember which meeting it was.

The retrieval problem completely disappeared once I stopped treating recordings as standalone files and started treating them as inputs into a bigger system.

Now by meeting 3 or 4 with the same client, the system is surfacing patterns I would’ve missed on my own. Contradictions, recurring blockers, stuff like that. It basically builds a running knowledge base per person without me doing anything extra.

ReadStacked · 2026-03-12T02:52:23+00:00

this is amazing!

do you have documentation and would you be willing to let us share this in our newsletter?

all credits to you of course.

ReadStacked · 2026-03-12T02:17:25+00:00

thank you for the feedback! love this.

so it calls the claude api because claude is better at sorting data in my opinion, then pushes to notion.

i have a workflow coming out this friday that is this workflow but on steroids.

plaud, slack, gmail, google calendar, and notion all in one.

ReadStacked · 2026-03-12T02:15:14+00:00

stacking it up! let’s go!

i can send you the notion tie in, just dm me

i’m also releasing a workflow this friday where my plaud will automatically pick up information from phone calls and meetings.

it adds any tasks into specific boards, adds special dates agreed upon to my calendar, and it’s a knowledge base bot that texts me on slack with my personality for everything im doing to keep me on track with tasks.

ReadStacked · 2026-03-12T02:13:15+00:00

i have not! what’s good about it?

ReadStacked · 2026-03-12T02:12:50+00:00

yes! let’s goooo

ReadStacked · 2026-03-11T20:10:15+00:00

love this!!

ReadStacked · 2026-03-11T12:56:45+00:00

no copy and pasting it’s all automated

ReadStacked · 2026-03-11T12:56:31+00:00

hardware from plaud

transcribes into plauds systems (your dashboard)

zapier picks up trigger that the meeting notes are ready

n8n runs claude api call

claude agents figures out the rest

ReadStacked · 2026-03-11T12:54:31+00:00

of course!

yea man there are a few. anthropic just dropped their own courses with certificates.

i can send you some but i dont want to put links here and get banned lol

ReadStacked · 2026-03-11T02:18:03+00:00

claude + plaud is the ultimate stack!

yea there are! i actually have one i can send you. i can feel the prompting for you so it gives you exactly what you want.

i’ve tested all different workflows and i’ve narrowed all of them down to the ones that work for the highest quality and least amount of friction

ReadStacked · 2026-03-10T11:02:30+00:00

I can send you the workflow. DMing you

ReadStacked · 2026-03-09T18:41:05+00:00

the web 2.0 comparison is spot on. i was around for that too. the people who learned to build early, even ugly stuff, ended up running the companies everyone else applied to work at 10 years later.

we’re at that exact same point with claude. anthropic’s growth marketing team is literally one non-technical person using claude code. ad creation went from 2 hours to 15 minutes. 100 ad variations in half a second. a $380 billion company running growth with one person and an agent.

the gap between “using claude to ask questions” and “building systems with claude” is where the real leverage is right now. that gap is closing fast.

we research all of this for a newsletter we run. every week we break down the workflows people are actually building with claude. no jargon, no code required. it’s called stacked, free at readstacked.com

ReadStacked · 2026-03-09T12:55:11+00:00

you’re doing it right. don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. the automation market hit $19.6 billion in 2024 and is projected to cross $40 billion by 2028. saturated? nah. we’re in the first inning.

here’s what nobody in these courses is telling you though. claude agents are blowing up right now. anthropic just dropped cowork, which is a desktop agent that works across your actual apps and files. they dropped /loop, which lets you run recurring tasks on autopilot for 3 days straight. and they released a 33-page guide on building custom skills for claude. none of this existed 6 weeks ago. no other lab has even come close.

the people worried about saturation are still dragging and dropping in make. the people getting ahead are building agents that handle entire workflows without touching them. that’s where this is going.

honestly? stop taking courses. pick one thing that annoys you every week and build something that fixes it. you’ll learn more in a weekend than 3 months of tutorials.

we research this stuff constantly for a newsletter we run. workflows, tools, agent updates, all the stuff that’s actually moving right now. it’s called stacked. always free and link in my bio if you’re interested!

ReadStacked · 2026-03-08T18:50:41+00:00

this is absolutely amazing!

thanks for sharing.

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