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Newsletters

Talk your newsletter out loud, draft in two models, finish by hand

Tools:
VoicePal, Claude (Projects), ChatGPT (Projects), Notion
Who it's for

Founders who think better out loud than at a keyboard

What they report

Ali Abdaal says writing his newsletter used to take about 2 hours and now takes about half an hour. He finds Claude better at writing about 80% of the time and ChatGPT better about 20% of the time because its memory knows more about him.

Example

Abdaal: 'the kernel and the seed of the idea is coming from me myself and I'm only using the AI in a way to augment that.' He tried four or five outputs before one was about 80% good, then edited it in Notion and removed the subheadings.

from source

How to do it

  1. Record a voice memo on a walk about the idea, with a personal story.
  2. Answer a few follow-up questions out loud (what barriers, what anecdote, how it applies elsewhere).
  3. Paste the transcript into a Claude Project and a ChatGPT Project set up for your newsletter.
  4. Give both the same prompt. Keep the better draft.
  5. Edit in your own editor. Write personal sections (like favorite things) yourself.
  6. Ask for 20 subject lines and pick one.

The prompt

Fill in the [brackets]
Copy prompt

This project is for my newsletter, [name]. Past issues are in the project files. Below is a raw voice transcript of me talking through this week's idea. Turn it into an issue of [name]. - Keep my stories, examples and phrases. Do not add any story I didn't tell. - Match the length and structure of my past issues. - No subheadings unless my past issues use them. - Flag any spot where I need to add a detail. TRANSCRIPT: [paste] (After editing:) Generate 20 subject lines for this email.

Prompt:
Legacy Builder version; subject-line line is from the source
Source:
Ali Abdaal, 'How I use AI to save 10+ hours per week' (YouTube, Feb 14, 2025)
Read the original ↗
Legacy Builder Lab

Want help putting these to work every week?

Legacy Builder Lab is Clifton Sellers' community for founders who write their own content with AI. Members get his prompts and bot setups, five new post templates every Monday and a monthly live teardown.

Join the Lab waitlist
Run by Clifton Sellers, who also curates this library.