The CEO Office: 4 prompts and the Company Brain template
The CEO Office is a chief of staff system in Claude. It does 4 jobs: a morning brief, a one-page brief before each outside meeting, a decision memo that interviews you first, and a Friday review of your week. These are the 4 prompts and the template behind it, so you can run it yourself.
The reels show a sample company (Tolliver Fabrication), not a client.
What you need
A paid Claude plan (Pro, Max, Team or Enterprise).
A Claude Project for it. Call it "CEO Office".
Your email and calendar connected in Claude, if you want it to read them directly. If they aren't, paste what it needs into the chat.
About 30 minutes to write your Company Brain.
Step 1: write your Company Brain
Claude doesn't know your business until you tell it. The Company Brain is one document you add to the Project as a file, so every chat in that Project can use it. Write it once, keep each section short enough to scan, and update it when your priorities change.
Who you are and how you decide. Your role, what you're accountable for, how you like a decision framed, and what you decide alone.
This quarter's priorities. Three, each with an owner, what "done" looks like, and a date.
The people who matter. Name, role, and what each relationship is for right now.
Customers, deals and prospects in flight. Stage, next step, owner and date for each.
Tone and format. How long you like things, and the words you use and avoid.
Standing rules. For example: drafts never send, never guess a number, flag anything over an amount you set.
Sources. Where each kind of information lives: email, calendar, meeting recorder, CRM, documents.
Step 2: the 4 prompts
Run each one in a chat inside the CEO Office Project. Change the words in [brackets].
1. Morning brief
Act as my chief of staff. Write my morning brief for today.
Read the Company Brain file in this project first, and rank everything by this quarter's priorities in it, not by what arrived last.
Use today's calendar, email from the last day, and any open items from yesterday's brief. [If your email or calendar isn't connected, paste them below.]
Give me exactly these blocks:
Today: each meeting, with one line on what it's for.
Needs you: at most 5 items, each with why it needs me and by when. If nothing needs me, say so in one line.
Stuck: anything that has waited on me for more than 3 days.
Sources checked / not reachable: every source you read and every source you couldn't reach, by name.
Choose. Don't summarize everything. Say which source each fact came from, and never guess a number or a commitment.2. Meeting brief
Act as my chief of staff. Build a one-page brief for my meeting with [name] on [date].
Read the Company Brain file in this project first. Then use only the calendar invite, the last 90 days of email with them, the notes or transcript from our last meeting, and their CRM record. [Paste anything that isn't connected.]
Use this order:
Who: name, role, and what this relationship is for.
Last time: the date, what we agreed, and a word-for-word quote if the notes have one.
Open: what each side still owes, with dates.
Decide today: 1 to 3 items.
Watch out: one line, only if something warrants it.
Sources checked / not reachable: every source you read and every source you couldn't reach.
Never add a commitment you can't point to in a source. Keep it to one page.3. Decision memo
Act as my strategy coach. I need to decide: [the decision].
Before you write anything, ask me exactly 3 clarifying questions, one at a time. Wait for my answer to each before you ask the next. Don't skip this, even if I'm in a hurry.
Then, using my answers, the Company Brain file in this project and anything I attach, write:
Decision as stated: my question, in my words.
What you told me: my 3 answers.
Assumptions: ranked by how much the decision depends on each.
Pre-mortem: it's 6 months from now and this failed. The 3 likeliest reasons.
The question I haven't asked: one.
Recommendation: with your confidence, high, moderate or low.
Sources checked / not reachable: by name.
Play a skeptical board member for the pre-mortem. Mark every inference as an inference.The interview step comes from Geoff Woods' CRIT method in The AI-Driven Leader.
4. Friday review
Act as my chief of staff. Score my week against this quarter's priorities in the Company Brain file in this project.
First ask me: "Which priority mattered most this week?" Wait for my answer.
Use this week's calendar, my sent email, this week's meeting notes, and last Friday's review if there is one. [Paste anything that isn't connected.]
Give me:
Moved: what advanced, with the evidence and its source.
Didn't move: what stalled, and why.
Promised: everything I committed to, to whom, by when. Quote my own words where the notes have them.
Next week's one thing: a single item.
Sources checked / not reachable: by name.
Never add a commitment you can't point to in a source.To have the morning brief and the Friday review arrive on their own, set them up as scheduled tasks. The SCHEDULE guide shows how.
The mistake to avoid
Letting it fill the gaps. Every prompt ends with "Sources checked / not reachable" for a reason: when your inbox or recorder isn't connected, the brief should say so, not guess. Keep that line in. And don't give it permission to send email for you. Have it write drafts, and you send them.
Want it running on your own inbox and calendar?
That's what I install: the Company Brain written with you, Claude connected to your email, calendar, meeting recorder and CRM, the briefs on a schedule, and sending switched off. Book a call: https://www.stephenthorn.com/contact/#schedule