Claude Built a Custom Dashboard That Manages My Tasks Automatically

Claude looked at my to-do list and basically said, "Yeah, this is chaos. Let's fix that." With Cohort, Claude connects to your apps and files, and the productivity plugin makes him start showing up like a specialist who actually runs the whole system. So, I told Claude to build one for me. He gathered all my info, organized everything, and now I have a custom dashboard that syncs across my apps and updates automatically. It even has a theme selector, calendar view, and a visual chart of my tasks by priority. So, if your tasks are still scattered across five apps, you're doing way too much. Here's how to use Claude Co-work to build a dashboard to manage your system. So, open up the Claude app and let's get started. First, we want to give Claude the job using the productivity plugin. Plugins work inside of Claude Co-work or Claude Code and they're basically a bundle of skills, connectors, and even sub agents. So from your Claude app on the desktop, click customize and then at the bottom of the screen, click browse plugins. Look for the one called productivity. Now this already has some skills and connectors that are built into it. So it is already set up for everything that we need to do today. And it can link back to your Slack, Notion, ClickUp, Microsoft 365, whatever accounts you need to connect it to. Claude will be able to gather information there and bring it into your dashboard. So once you have that plugin installed, hit new task. And first you want to point this toward a folder. It's best just to use an empty folder when you're getting this set up. And there's two ways that you can start. You can either type slash and a menu will pop up or at the bottom of the box here, you'll see there's a plus sign. If you click on that, we can see our plugins and skills. Everything is right here. So, under plugins, select productivity and we want to start the system. Now, let's have a quick look over here in co-work if you haven't used co-work before. So, you can see Claude's progress along the way while he's working on the actual task. You can see the folder that he's working in and any files that he's created and the context he's used. So the skill to start the system is right here. And we can click this and see more information about what exactly just happened. So when we started this command, Claude's checking to see what's already in the folder and he's going to create anything that's missing. And the system functions off of a couple really basic files. We've got a task list written in markdown, a claude.md, which is a working memory file Claude uses to keep notes on everything he needs to know. Then Claude will create a memory directory so he can store information on an ongoing basis about any upcoming projects, new clients, or just your preferences. And everything shows up visually on a file called dashboard.html, HTML, which is your visual UI and how you interact with all your information. Whatever information you use to track your tasks, is important because that determines how you can filter things and how you can look at the list. So, this is what I'm going to tell Claude to do. I'm saying I want to start fresh. I'm going to give you my top three tasks for today. This is what I want you to track. The name, the due date, the status, and the priority. And I've also given Claude a little bit of shortorthhand here. So I said if priority is zero that means urgent, one would be high, two medium, and three is low. This way I don't have to actually tell Claude this is a high priority task. I can just say P1. So we're going to let Claude add these to the dashboard in 1 second. First, let's actually have a look at what he's built in the folder. We see there's two files. There's a dashboard and a task file. And the tasks are already set up with active, waiting on, someday, or done. So, let's look at what it actually looks like inside of our browser. So, when you open the file, it'll open up inside your browser. You can look at the URL. It's directing it back to the file on your computer. So, it's not actually online. And the first thing it's going to ask you to do is select your task file. Even though there's no tasks, we can add a task right here. We can look at a list view. And there's a space for memory, but Claude hasn't made the memory file yet. Still need to answer a couple questions. So, let's tell Claude, go ahead and add these first three tasks. And we're going to let him work on adding those. All right. So, Claude said that everything is here and our tasks have been added. So, if I open up my dashboard, I didn't even have to refresh the page. Everything's here. So, I've got my haircut appointment, my background research. We can see the due date, the priority, and the status for each task. And if we click on the list view now, you can see it's a little more easy to see how that's different. Just puts everything in a vertical view rather than having it all laid out side by side. Now, if I want to say I'm going to wait on this task, I can drag and drop. And I'm going to get this notification. Do you want to save your file? Yeah, I do. If I open up the actual task file, you can see that that finish background research task got moved to the waiting on list exactly as I moved it right here. And it happens instantly. So I just move something to the someday task. And now if I open up my task.md, it's on the someday list. This is just a visual interface, this HTML file that Claude uses to show you exactly what's going on on your task list. Next up, we want Claude to develop the memory. So, let's go back to the conversation and say, "Okay, task looked good. Now, let's work on the memory." Now, Claude's asking me a few questions to set up my cloud. MD. So, let me answer these real quick. Okay, so Claude basically wanted to know what's my role, what tools do I use every day, what people should Claude know about, and any project names or code names. So, I've just given Claude some basic info so he can start to build a file on me. If you've got a list of contacts, you can give Claude that information here. You can upload some files. This is all building Claude's brain. So, for the demo, for sake of just being quick, I'm giving really short answers. You might have more robust answers. You don't need to give Claude your whole life story. Claude's creating a Claude memory, a glossery so that he knows who's who, what terms I'm using, and a profile for Dave as well because that's the one person I gave him information about. So now the Claude memory system is live and Claude has some information about me. Let's take a peek at what got built. Before we just had the dashboard and the tasks. Now we've got a new file called claude.mmd. Here, Claude has given himself a little bit of notes about who I am, the people I work with, some projects I have, and tools I use. Inside of memory, we've also got some other folders. So, there's a glossery Claude will build. This way, Claude knows if I say P 0, that's urgent. You remember earlier when I gave him tasks, I told him how I might label those. Claude also knows the AI creator drop, that's the name of my substack. also knows Dave, that's David, who is her business partner. So now Claude has a better idea of who I work with, what I do. Uh has a little profile page built for Dave. And there's even some ongoing projects. So there's some awareness now when I come to Claude with a task list of what I'm actually working on. Now, back inside the dashboard to load up Claude's memory, we're going to select our project folder. right here. You want to select the folder that has everything in it. So, even though Claude made a memory folder, you're going to select the folder that you put the whole system in. And I'll show you how that looks. We can tell how much information Claude's gathered so far. You can read through this and you can edit it right here. You can also edit any of those markdown files right inside your file system or you can just tell Claude this needs to change. So exactly like the tasks, you have three places you can edit anything in the system through claude, through the files or through the actual dashboard. At this point, the dashboard's actually done and you can start using it. But I think it looks a little basic. So this is where customization can really take your dashboard to the next level. And because the system runs on three files that are literally on your computer, Claude can customize them for you just through the conversation. I'm going to prompt Claude to add a theme selector so I have some colors to choose from and a calendar view so I can see what's actually coming up. So, back inside of Claude. So, I'm going to tell Claude, please add the following. Number one, I want a new calendar view for my tasks. And number two, give me a theme selector so I can choose from some colors. And then I also threw in a doughnut chart to show me my task by priority. Now, you can add other charts. And this is where it's really important to think about the fields that you give Claude when you tell him, "This is what I want you tracking because obviously what you track determines what can be displayed." Okay, Claude came back. His work is done. He's got a calendar view, theme selector, and doughnut chart for us. And I've already got the file open, so I can just refresh the page. And now I have a beautiful theme selector with the different options that I asked for like pink, green, terminal, dark mode, and I've got a nice open task by priority. Looks like I've got three open tasks. Two are medium and one are low priority. So let's change this one to high priority and see what happens. Instantly the dashboard updates and everything is looking really good right now. So, I have the theme selector. I have the open task by priority and the calendar. Now, the calendar does look a little weird because it looks like the task title is determining the size of the cell. So, I'll go back and tell Claude, let's fix this. Now, Claude's done working on that. So, if we go back over to our dashboard, everything's sized perfectly. It looks really nice. And now we have a system that we can leverage with Claude. So, if we go back into co-work, you can actually schedule Claude to update your to-do list based on whatever's coming in your calendar, your inbox, maybe if you keep your to-do list in notion, you can just slash schedule and tell Claude when to show up and what exactly to do. So now your tasks and memory files stay updated locally on your computer, so you don't have to check three different apps just to know what's actually going on. Claude checks across your apps, updates your to-do list, takes notes on your priorities, and builds you a plan.