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Welcome to Clief Notes. Here's where to start.
1. Watch the intro video and introduce yourself in the intro post here 2. Start with The Foundation (free course). Concepts, folder architecture, prompting framework. Everything else builds on this. 3. Check in at the bottom of each lesson. Polls, discussion posts, other members working through the same stuff. Use them. 4. When you're ready to build real things, move to Implementation Playbooks (Level 2). When you're ready to build your own tools, Building Your Stack (Level 3). 5. Post your work. Ask questions. Help others when you can. What are you here to build?
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🌶️ CINCO DE MAYO FIRESALE — STARTS NOW 🌶️
Locked in for the next 5 days only. Ends May 5th at 10:00 AM EST. No exceptions. 🎉 Premium: $27 → $14/mo 🎉 VIP: $97 → $67/mo The closest you'll get to our original launch pricing. We're doing this because the community has shown up for us, and we want to show up back. 🤝 🔥 Already a member? Read this carefully. To lock in the new rate, you need to: 1. Cancel your current plan 2. Resign under the new price That's the only way the system can apply the new rate. We have way too many members for manual refunds, so we can't refund anyone who just signed up at current pricing. But the savings stack month over month, so if you plan to stick around (and you should 😁), the math works out fast. 🚫 A few ground rules: Please do not DM myself or Jake about pricing, exceptions, or extensions. We love you, but we're a small team and we need to stay focused on building. Everyone gets the same window. Everyone gets the same deal. If you miss it, you miss it. We'll do more things for the community down the road. ⏰ The clock: 🟢 LIVE NOW 🔴 Locks May 5th, 10:00 AM EST - Premium gets you The Vault and Afternoon Tea calls. - VIP gets you The Drawing Room, High Tea, and bespoke folder builds from Jake himself. If you've been on the fence, this is the moment. 🚀 Tag a friend who needs to be in here. Let's make Cinco a movement. 🎊 🌶️🌶️🌶️
Mini-Series Part 2: The "Token Crash" & The Keyboard Epiphany
In Part 1, I was riding high. I had Chrome, Edge, and Firefox all running simultaneously, tripling my speed on a massive D365 rebilling project. I felt like I’d cracked the code to being "efficiently lazy." Link: Mini-Series Part 1: The "Manual Hell" Rebill Project · Clief Notes But the victory was short-lived. I was driving the car at 100mph, but I didn't realize how much fuel I was burning. The Crash: 3 Hours to Zero The next morning, I fired up all cylinders. It was beautiful—until it wasn't. In under 3 hours, I burned through my entire token allotment. I was dead in the water with a 1.5-hour wait until my limits reset. With the clock ticking and sales reps still needing updates, I had to go back to doing it manually. And that’s when the "Aha!" moment happened. The "Tab" Breakthrough While I was clicking and typing manually to pass the time, I realized something: I wasn't really using the mouse. I was mostly hitting Tab and Shift-Tab to navigate the D365 fields. I asked Claude: "Can Playwright just 'Tab' through the browser instead of searching for elements and taking screenshots for every move?" Claude’s answer: YES. My jaw dropped. From "Visual Driving" to "Macro Speed" The old workflow relied on Claude "seeing" the screen via screenshots to make sure it was in the right spot. It was accurate, but heavy. I had Claude rewrite the interior workflow to a deterministic loop: 1. The Setup: I open the URL, set the filters, and select the first row. 2. The Loop: * Tab to Invoice → Enter. 3. Repeat. I added small buffers (100ms between tabs, 4s for page loads) to ensure D365 could keep up. See the video for how the flow runs in real life! The Result: 90% Savings & 10x Efficiency I asked Claude to evaluate the two methods. The numbers were staggering: Old "Visual" Flow: - Tool Calls: ~500 calls per 50 orders - Token Usage: 100% (High Burn) - Logic: Screenshot-dependent (Slow)
Built an always-on AI Chief of Staff that texts me.
I've been in this community for about a month now and wanted to share where things stand with one of my builds. This isn't polished by any stretch. I do have a few other workflows like content-creator, document-creator, but I needed something to help me navigate my day-to-day as I begin a couple side quests outside my normal 9-5. The goal was simple: I didn't want another chat window I have to remember to open. I wanted something that knows my priorities, reads my calendar, checks my email, and texts me when I need a nudge. Not a chatbot, more like a Chief of Staff. And the goal is to operate within the bounds of the subscription with no extra costs, while also maximizing token efficiency. The other thing I didn't want to do is implement an orchestrating harness yet (OpenClaw, Hermes, etc). The challenge for myself was to keep this as simple as possible without inflating scope. Someone in this community said once: 'constraints are just as, if not more, important than your requirements. What do you NOT want your build to do?' I've definitely taken this to heart in my workflows. ## Planning I've made a few posts about this in comments, but I cannot stress the importance of planning before you build. My method was simple: - First I brain dumped context via voice dictation and transcribed this. Simple tools: VoiceMemos, copy, paste. - Next, I worked through the planning phase with the chat function of Claude in Opus 4.6. I wanted pushback, challenge, and for the model to force me to think deeper and keep me honest. This produced the product requirement document, or PRD. This was a multi-day process (a week?) in my free-time. - For the architecture build, I used Cowork. Handed it the PRD, answered a few basic questions, and then it went on it's way. Got it uploaded to a private git repo. - Currently, I'm working thru further debugging and walking thru the checklist within the PRD in a phased approach. As you'll see below, I have setup a remote screenshare so I can also let Cowork see what I'm doing. This was the most essential because we work TOGETHER to make things happen. it's like working side-by-side with my developer and engineer.
Built an always-on AI Chief of Staff that texts me.
The Folder System Became My Agency
Twenty-four days ago I posted about Jake's folder system video. This is what happened next. Same foundation — markdown files, orchestration prompts, clear roles. I just kept building. Fifteen named specialists. Each one with a soul file, guardrails, and a playbook. Duke orchestrates. Cash writes. Trace pulls the data. Hank runs the financials. Clint handles the MCP integrations. Behind each one is either a human counterpart doing the real work alongside them — or a role I can't afford to hire yet. Katie who's been with me for 18 years, now has her own orchestrator running the same system. Twenty-seven client folders. Twelve live MCP integrations. One shared repo. The folder system isn't replacing my agency. It becoming my agency. Jake gave me the unlock. This is how it's going.
The Folder System Became My Agency
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Clief Notes
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Jake Van Clief, giving you the Cliff notes on the new AI age.
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