The Filter · Weekly AI Newsletter
AI is noisy.
I make it simple.
A weekly newsletter with AI workflows, tools actually worth your time, and tutorials for founders, creators, and AI-first operators who want results, not jargon.
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Every Friday · 5-minute read
Every week in The Filter
3
things worth your attention in AI
I read everything AI so you don't have to. Only what actually matters this week.
2
videos worth watching
The best stuff in AI I watched this week. No filler recommendations.
1
use case you can try today
A real workflow I built and tested. Copy it. Run it. Save hours.
Who's behind it
Hey, I'm Zach.
I'm a digital marketer who's spent the past year going deep into AI. Not just reading about it, but building with it every day. I spend 40+ hours a week inside these tools, testing what works, figuring out what doesn't, and finding the stuff that actually saves time.
This newsletter is my real thoughts, hand-written. Not AI-generated, not repurposed summaries.
Every week I write about the tools I'm trying, the workflows that are working, and the things I'd tell a friend over coffee. I'm at the forefront of this stuff, and I want to break it down so you don't have to figure it all out on your own.
My goal is that the 5 minutes you spend reading this each week is the only time you have to pay attention to AI. Tune everything else out.
There's never been a better time to be alive and learn AI.
I'm rooting for you.
Free stuff
Free guides & starter kits
Copy-paste starter kits and tutorials. Grab whatever helps.
Build a Team of Always-On AI Agents
Grok Bot gives you named AI teammates that live on a cloud computer, sign into your actual tools, hand work to each other, and keep going after you close your laptop. No Mac mini, no gateway, no terminal. The full setup given away in full with all 5 copy-paste prompts. How to actually get access (it signs in with a Cursor account, and the SuperGrok or X Premium+ link is permanent, so get it right the first time), the install, then the brain dump into reverse prompt that makes Grok Bot design your whole bot team and then build it itself, names, descriptions, and first tasks included. The plugin shortcut: install Composio once and reach a thousand apps instead of wiring every tool by hand, plus the prompt that walks your stack one approval at a time. The five-part task structure that gets a real result instead of a summary. How to turn a task that worked into a saved skill and then a scheduled routine, in that order, with a test run before you enable it. Group chats where two to six bots hand work between themselves. And the security rules nobody mentions: all your bots share one computer, so they are not separate security walls, deleting a bot does not revoke its access, and a test run does real work. Accurate as of September 2026, early beta.
Read guideBuild an AI Phone Receptionist That Books and Transfers
Fish Audio quietly shipped a full voice agent builder: no-code console, a knowledge base you upload your own docs into, real phone numbers, warm transfers to a human, and automatic summaries after every call. This is the complete walkthrough for turning that into a phone receptionist for a real business, given away in full, every click. Clone your voice from a reel (or pick a library voice), paste the interview prompt into Claude and get the receptionist's system prompt and knowledge doc written for you, build the agent (greeting, voice, expressive mode, knowledge upload), turn on warm transfer so it briefs you on your cell before connecting the caller, set up the post-call data fields so every call gets logged with name, callback number, reason, and urgency, buy a local number and bind it, publish, then roll it out the safe way by forwarding only your missed calls. Plus the optional Step 13 with the Claude Code prompt that builds the booking endpoint so it puts appointments on your calendar itself. Real costs (Plus is $15/mo through August 31), the eight gotchas, and no Twilio, n8n, Retell, or developer required.
Read guideA Full Beginner's Guide to AI
The number one thing that stops beginners is not knowing which tool to pick, so they spend a month deciding and never start. This guide assumes nothing: every step has the exact click path for Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini, and both copy-paste prompts are given away in full. Thing 1, stop using the chat feature and switch to an actual assistant (Claude Cowork or ChatGPT Work), which turns ask a question, get an answer into give it a goal, get a result, with a straight comparison of all three tools so you can stop deliberating and pick one. Thing 2, paste the interview prompt: it asks you one question at a time, goes a level deeper when your answer is vague, then writes a personal-instructions block under 400 words, and tells you exactly where to paste it in whichever tool you named. Thing 3, connect Gmail, Calendar, and Drive so it can act inside your real accounts instead of talking about it, plus the one-line test that proves the connector is actually live. Thing 4, paste the skill prompt: it does not ask what to build, because beginners do not know yet. It interviews you to find repeated work, scores the candidates on frequency, dread, and doability in front of you, designs the skill before building it, then builds and tests it live until the output is right, so you can run it forever by typing a slash. Plus the three ways beginners lose the plot. No coding, no terminal.
Read guideHow to Set Up Claude in One Day
Almost every beginner starts in the wrong place, hunting for the perfect prompt or the secret cheat code, then wonders why the output still reads like generic AI slop. A great prompt on an unconfigured Claude loses to an average prompt on a configured one, every single time. This is that configuration, given away in full with all 3 copy-paste prompts. Step 1, switch from Chat to Cowork so Claude works out of a real folder on your computer, reads your files, and takes multi-step actions instead of you being the middleman. Step 2, paste the interview prompt: Claude asks you questions one at a time, then writes the personal-instructions block you paste into settings so every future chat already knows you (including the name trick, a free warning light for when a chat has run too long). Step 3, connect Gmail, Calendar, and Drive so Claude can actually do things in your real accounts instead of just talking about them. Step 4, paste the voice prompt: drop in 5 to 10 real writing samples and Claude builds a voice profile, then tests itself against you and rewrites until it genuinely sounds like you. Step 5, paste the automation prompt: Claude finds the single highest-leverage task in your week, builds it as a reusable skill, and schedules it to run without you. Plus a checkpoint after every step so you know it actually worked before moving on. About 30 minutes, done once, no coding and no terminal.
Read guideHow I Went From 365 to 16,500 Followers in 2.5 Months
For 2.5 months I was stuck in 300 view jail with 365 followers, and it was not because I was not using AI. It was because I was pointing it at the wrong three things: writing my scripts, guessing at trends from months-old training data, and doing the creative work I should have owned. This is the flip that fixed it, given away in full. AI takes the two ends (research and distribution), I keep the middle (the angle, the story, the delivery). The exact 2-tool stack with full setup: Blotato to connect Claude to every social account you run so it repurposes, schedules, posts, and runs DM flows, and Sandcastles so Claude can see what topics and formats are actually working in your niche this week instead of guessing. Then all 4 copy-paste prompts, nothing blurred out: the audit prompt that finds your real outliers against your own median and saves them to a file, the remix prompt that writes 10 new concepts which each have to trace back to a proven winner, the hook prompt that generates 5 structured variants per concept and kills anything under a 7, and the distribution prompt that writes the platform-native version for every app and schedules the week through Blotato after you approve the plan. Plus the 7 free Claude skills that turn the whole loop into single commands, a 30% off Blotato code, and the honest part about what this does not do. No coding background needed.
Read guideClaude Academy: The 4 Courses That Matter
Anthropic put their entire Claude training program online for free, then buried it under 22 courses, which is why most people open it once and never go back. The whole shortcut given away in full: the 4 courses to take and the exact order they build in, why nine of the 22 are the same course wearing different clothes, the three courses that are 25 hours of developer-only material you can skip guilt-free, which single AI Fluency track to pick, where to go after the four, and the three rules that keep you from forgetting all of it by Friday. About 7 hours total, a real Anthropic certificate at the end, free, no code.
Read guideGo further
Want more than the guides?
I help businesses turn this stuff into real systems, and I partner with the AI tools I actually use.
The Filter
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Every Friday. The 3 things that matter, 2 videos worth watching, and 1 workflow you can run today.
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