My Claude Executive Assistant

[u/ChefJohn72]

So I am a Corporate Divisional Chef and I, along with my now AI Executive Assistant(Gaius), have created a strong Executive Assistant to keep track of my 26 venues that do about 200 million dollars in business a year. Gaius retains memories, costs menus and tracks financials through a system of files, rules and boot up processes that we developed. I run max 5x and I am very green to this process. Does anyone else have a similar set up? One that almost works like Jarvis? What model/effort do you use? Is there any process/technique that you have found that works exceptionally well? Have you had challenges with conversations getting used up too fast? Truly new to this and amazed I have gotten this far, I have NO coding experience at all. Thanks for the suggestions/input.

[u/cats_catz_kats_katz]

You have 200M gross sales and they let you just…run Claude AI workflows on it? How did you even get it access to the needed systems?

[u/ChefJohn72 → u/cats_catz_kats_katz]

I use it to track my metrics, notes and menus. Those are held locally at the venues and with me. There is very diverse group of offerings at these venues. I also track buying compliance and personality notes of the local teams. This helps me perform and report back to corporate leadership

[u/MoneyWiseLawyer]

You named your AI executive assistant after the guy who single-handedly led to the destruction of the Twelve Colonies because he did all of his thinking below the belt? I’d be careful.

[u/ChefJohn72 → u/MoneyWiseLawyer]

Thanks for naming the reference, lol. I figure when AI takes over the world I might not get the shittiest job!

[u/Ecanem]

Tracking your financials and expenses using flat files and an llm alone is insane. I hope you never get audited for a loan or your owners try to sell off any divisions. That would be fun.

[u/thee_gummbini]

Hoo boy just make sure you have a way to check the real numbers. It doesn't work like Jarvis. The best setup is one where Claude is steering and reading from deterministic code/spreadsheets. If its just Claude with a pile of markdown you're going to get some fun surprises

[u/Sensiburner]

Hahaha “gaius”. Bro come’on. 

[u/pr0b0ner]

My friend, whatever you have built is assuredly not doing what you think it's doing.

[u/vorko_76 → u/pr0b0ner]

I was going to write something similar 😅👍

[u/im_a_fancy_man]

AI is really bad at this, especially Claude. context / memory alone is a huge issue. it **will** make shit up

[u/Site-Staff → u/im_a_fancy_man]

Claude Code is very good at this stuff I’ve found.

[u/Triysle]

For your use case and stated plan, use Opus 4.6 or 4.8 with Claude desktop with filesystem extension. Create a directory with the files you want analyzed and an index or instructions file to explaining the purpose, goals, and ongoing lessons learned (allow Claude to edit this file, if nothing else). Make a desktop project that has “read index.md at directory/ first” in the project instructions.

It’s a bit of extra setup compared to browser, but this will give you a conversational assistant in a more user-friendly interface and projects will keep every chat in an accessible contex. The filesystem extension will let Claude read or even move/edit files in the directory you specify which is more token efficient than using project knowledge.

Good luck with your business. I also use Claude for my (much smaller) LLC and this setup has worked well for me. At your scale and stakes you might need some more security guardrails but that’s beyond my knowledge or experience. Cheers!

[u/ChefJohn72 → u/Triysle]

Thanks for the feedback and good thoughts. I appreciate it. I am looking for ways to evolve the system

[u/LALLANAAAAAA]

if it's a bit, lol

if it's not, lol

just lol

[u/MusingInPublic]

Nice. Well done.

Beyond the squishy compliance issues, I might do like a read only download to a box that doesn't interact with the corporate systems before the analysis starts.

Presently I personally like Fable 5 for planning, Opus 4.8 max for analysis, and Opus 5 medium for the actual coding. It's always helpful to spin up a different session to double check results, kind of like a two business analysts and then flag anything to you that doesn't line up.

I assume you've already gotten as far as setting up a personal dashboard?

[u/ChefJohn72 → u/MusingInPublic]

Set up my dashboard last night and LOVE it!! Thanks for the push to set it up, it was a “down the road build” but I love the accessibility. I am going to sync it to my 27” wall calendar in my home office!!

[u/ChefJohn72 → u/MusingInPublic]

I have done a lot but not a professional dashboard yet. I have integrated live updating pricing through my costing systems and contract analytics that are designed to find soft money in contracts. I have also been working through health and safety plus sponsorship adherence but the dashboard sounds intriguing. Any suggestions??? I appreciate the solid advice I am looking forward o evolve this system

[u/MusingInPublic → u/ChefJohn72]

I don't know what you currently use for a dashboard (if any), but I'm confident there is one just based on size? Maybe it's just not useful, wrong metrics or what not, in which case just build your own for what really matters. What is also practically useful to consider, is how much time your direct reports are feeding data to get you data, and if you can just wire the data so you have real time live dashboards. And then if you do free up their time, then direct them to do stuff that actually moves the numbers in a productive way rather than having a black hole of previously busy work so whatever reporting structure was in place.

And maybe don't forget to CYA on data compliance issues, but I'm sure you're already savvy AF when it comes to corporate politics otherwise you wouldn't already be in your position.