Day to day work template - 3 to 8 tabs
Weekly update prompt template
Weekly updates fail in two directions: a list of activity nobody reads, or a summary so high-level it says nothing. This template aims between them.
The prompt
Write my weekly update from these sources. It is read by people who were not in any of the conversations. Audience: [WHO READS IT AND WHAT THEY DECIDE] Structure: - Headline: the one sentence that matters if they read nothing else. - Shipped: what is actually done and in use. Not "in progress". - Moved: what progressed without finishing, and what it is waiting on. - Blocked: what is stuck, who can unblock it, and what it costs per week of delay. - Next: the two or three things happening next week. Rules: - Maximum 250 words. - No activity for its own sake. If it did not change the state of something, leave it out. - Name the person for anything that needs a decision. - Do not soften blockers. "Waiting on legal since the 3rd" beats "pending review".
Why this prompt is written this way
Separating shipped from moved is what stops the update inflating. Almost everything is 'in progress', and a list of in-progress items conveys no information week to week.
Attaching a weekly cost to each blocker is what turns a status report into something that gets acted on, because it gives the reader a reason to intervene.
The word limit forces prioritisation onto the writer rather than the reader, which is the whole point of writing an update.
Getting more out of it
- Say what the audience decides with it. An update for your manager and one for a client share no structure.
- Include last week's update as one of the sources. It makes 'moved' accurate instead of restated.
- Keep the blocked section even when it is empty, and say so. A missing section reads as an omission.
- Send it the same day each week. Consistency is most of why updates get read.
Works best with
3 to 8 tabs open at once. Send them together rather than one at a time, so the assistant can compare them instead of forgetting the first by the time it reads the last. Sending tabs to Claude explains the options.
Common questions
- Where does it get the information?
- Only from the pages you send: tickets, threads, documents, whatever your week actually lived in. It has no access to anything else.
- Will it sound like me?
- Close enough to edit. Paste last week's update, written by you, as one of the sources and say to match its voice.
- Is 250 words too short for a busy week?
- Rarely. A busy week usually means more activity, not more state changes, and the update reports state changes.
Other templates
- Summarise a long threadA prompt template for long discussions: what was decided, what is still open, who owes what, and what changed along the way.
- Prep for a meetingA prompt template that turns the docs, threads and pages you have open into a short brief: what to know, what to ask and what could go wrong.
- Write a decision memoTurn the pages you have open into a one-page decision memo with options, trade-offs, a recommendation and the open questions.
Stop pasting tabs one by one
LocalBridge sends the pages you have open into Claude or ChatGPT in one click, so this template gets the sources it needs.
See how it works