A text to your house, every Sunday morning.

What arrives

This is the text. The email version is the archive, for when somebody asks what it said about Thursday.

The line that matters is the Wednesday one. Nobody has the 3:15 pickup, and it says so rather than guessing. That is a rule you write, not something the model worked out.

What it costs you to run

Estimates, per month, in US dollars, for a household texting three phones. You pay these to the companies listed, directly, on your own accounts. None of it comes to me. Nothing here is for sale.

Two phones instead of three brings it to about US$16. The AI is the cheapest part of this, which surprises everyone. The texts cost six times more than the thinking does.

What you need first

One thing to install, then a handful of accounts. Nothing here is hard, but every one of them will ask you to verify an email address.

Node, which runs the program

The digest is a small program, and Node is the free thing that runs it on your computer. You install it once and then never think about it again.

Open a terminal. On a Mac, press Command and Space together, type Terminal, press Enter. On Windows, press Start, type PowerShell, press Enter. A window opens with a blinking cursor. That is all a terminal is.

Type this and press Enter:

node --version

One of three things comes back.

To install or update it: go to nodejs.org and press the big green button marked LTS, which stands for the boring dependable version and is the one you want. Open the file it downloads and click through the installer, taking every default. Then close the terminal and open a new one, because an old terminal window keeps looking in the old place. Run node --version again and you should see the new number.

And these accounts

Start here

You do not have to read the code. Hand the repository to Claude and let it walk you through setup, one step at a time.

Use this template →

Make your copy private. Your household's routine is about to be written down in it.

If you have never used a terminal

Download the repository as a zip, start a chat at claude.ai, attach the zip, and paste the prompt below. Claude reads every file and tells you exactly what to do. When a step needs a command, it gives you the line to copy.

If you are willing to install one thing

Install Claude Code, open the folder in it, and paste the same prompt. Claude runs the commands itself, reads the output, and fixes what breaks without you copying anything back and forth.

I am setting up this home-ops repository, which sends my household a weekly
digest by text every Sunday. I have never set up anything like this. Assume no
technical background and explain any word you would not say out loud to a
friend.

Before you say anything, read README.md, then CLAUDE.md, then the five files in
_shared/. Then follow the setup in README.md with me.

How I want you to work with me:

1. One step at a time. Tell me what we are doing and why it matters, give me
   the exact thing to do, and then stop and wait for me. Do not give me steps 3
   through 7 at once.
2. After each step, give me the check from the README and ask me what I see. If
   what I see is wrong, work out why before we go on. Do not tell me to
   continue anyway.
3. Never ask me to paste an API key, a password, a phone number or any secret
   into this chat. When one is needed, tell me which file or which website
   field to put it in, and I will do it myself and tell you when it is done.
4. When we reach the five files in _shared/, interview me about my household
   instead of making me fill in templates. Ask about who lives here, who does
   drop-off and pickup, which days people are out, what the standing activities
   are, which calendars and which email senders matter. Ask a few questions at
   a time, not thirty. Then write each file for me, show it to me, and change
   whatever I do not like before we move on.
5. Tell me what each step costs, in money or in time, before I do it.
6. Stop before anything sends. The first thing that reaches my family should be
   something I have read first.

Start by telling me what I will have at the end, what it costs to run per
month, and the accounts I need to open. Then ask me which of those accounts I
already have, and we will begin.

Setup, in order

Every step ends with something you can check. If the check does not pass, stop, because every later step assumes this one worked.

1. Take your copy

   Use this template, then create a new repository. Make it private. Clone it to your machine.

   Checkls shows _shared/, stages/, tools/.

2. Run the built-in test

   This reads a fake calendar that ships with the template. No keys, no accounts, nothing sends.

   cd tools/digest-runner
   npm install
   npm run gather:test

   CheckThe output names a training session at 5:00 pm. If it says any other time, stop. That fixture exists to catch one specific timezone bug, and it is telling you the bug is back.

3. Fill in the five factory files

   Open _shared/. Five files, and they are templates rather than examples. Every bracket is yours to replace. If you only skim one, skim sources.md, because it decides what this thing is allowed to read.

   CheckNo square brackets left in any of the five.

4. Set your timezone

   The server keeps time in a different zone to your family. This is where you tell it which one is yours.

   CheckThe test from step 2 still says 5:00 pm.

5. Point it at your real calendars

   The secret iCal address of your family calendar, and the school one if you have it.

   Checknpm run gather:live lists events you recognise. It gathers only, and sends nothing.

6. Filter the school calendar

   Most schools publish one calendar for the entire school. The filter drops everything that is not your year level and hands back a clean feed your calendar subscribes to. Optional, and the rest works without it.

   CheckThe filtered month has your child's events and not the whole school's.

7. Rehearse

   npm run preview runs the entire Sunday on your real data and stops before sending. Read what it wrote.

   CheckThe text describes your actual week, and the file ends with a ---VERIFY--- section. Ideally it says "No findings."

8. Add your secrets to GitHub

   Settings, Secrets and variables, Actions. GitHub never shows a secret back to you after you save it, so keep your own copy somewhere safe.

   CheckThe names match those in .github/workflows/sunday-digest.yml exactly.

9. Send one for real

   Actions tab, choose "Sunday family digest", press Run workflow. After that it runs itself, late Sunday morning, until you turn it off.

   CheckA text arrives. If it does not, the Actions log names the step that failed and why.

The one rule

This is the whole difference between a system that improves and a chatbot you argue with every Sunday.

Every correction becomes a line in a file. Never a fix to that week's message.

When the message gets something wrong, the instinct is to retype the line and move on. Do that and you will retype it again next week, and the week after, until you quietly stop using the thing.

There are only two places a fix can go, and telling them apart is the skill.

A judgment mistake goes in the files

"It attached last week's class photo email to next Monday." The email was sent on a Thursday and said "Monday". No code can decide that, so it becomes one line in rules.md: a day named in an email is relative to the day that email was sent.

A machinery mistake goes in the code

"It said football was at 7am. It is at 5pm." No rule fixes a clock. That one goes in tools/, with a test that fails if it ever comes back.

Sort your own mistakes into those two piles for a month and you will know exactly which half of your system is thinking and which half is plumbing. Most people never find out, because they fix everything in a chat window and the chat forgets.

When it breaks

It will. Fifteen things broke before this one held.

You get a text saying the run failed, with a link. That is deliberate. A silent missing digest is the worst outcome, because you assume you had a quiet week. Open the link and read the red step.

What is in the repository

CLAUDE.md in the root is the map, and it routes you by what just happened. Every folder has a CONTEXT.md explaining itself.