Plan My Burn
My Claude subscription works while I sleep. I type /burn and the thing I want done. Claude writes a detailed instruction, and overnight an unattended Claude does the work. The next day /burn-review walks me through each result: keep, redo or park. Nothing ships unless I say keep.
- Why
- I pay for a weekly allowance I wasn't using up. It started as a Windows port of a tray app my co-founder made that shows how much allowance is left to burn. The lesson that made it work: every disappointing night traced back to a thin instruction, so a vague note is a defect, not a draft.
How I built it
- I made a queue: a table where each row is one piece of work.
- I wrote a skill that turns a one-line ask into a ten-part note a cold-start stranger could follow: where, what to read first, what, why, limits, facts not to invent, voice, done-when, how to check, and a safety line.
- I had it refuse anything that needs my phone, a login, a send, a payment or a decision I haven't made.
- I scheduled a nightly Claude run that takes a few tasks and does them.
- I added a second, separate Claude that reviews each result blind and is told to find problems, not confirm success.
- I wrote the review command that shows me the actual change and only merges on keep.
- To copy it you need
- Claude, or the AI of your choice, on a plan with scheduled runs, plus somewhere to hold the queue. The gotcha: the overnight agent remembers nothing from your chat. If the note assumes context, the night is wasted.
Try it yourself
Copy this prompt and paste it into ChatGPT or Claude to try it yourself.
I want to copy Plan My Burn from Frances Tang's What Are We Building profile. She types one line describing work she wants done, and her AI turns it into a detailed overnight instruction: where the work lives, what to read first, what done looks like, what facts not to invent, and how to check it. An unattended AI does it at night, a second AI reviews it looking for problems, and in the morning she picks keep, redo or park. Nothing goes out without her yes. Her gotcha: every bad night came from a note that assumed the overnight AI knew things it didn't. Help me start with just the note-writer: I give you a one-line task and you write the full instruction, asking me about anything a stranger wouldn't know. Ask me for anything you need.
Tools I used for this project
