Welcome.
Thank you for signing up to the AI challenge. I’m so glad you are here and I’m looking forward to going on this journey with you!
This challenge is to get you from AI anxious to AI confident in thirty days. Ten to twenty minutes most days. By Day 30 you’ll have built your own AI agent that runs on a schedule while you sleep. Built in your voice. About your work. Useful to you. Saving you time and stretching your brain!
Today is setup. This email is longer than the ones you’d usually receive as I need to explain a few steps to get you set up and ready.
Two tools to install, about twenty minutes in total. Then we start properly tomorrow.
Why Claude (and not ChatGPT or Gemini)
Quick note before we go further.
Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini are the three major AI tools you’ll hear about this year. All three can help you. None of them is objectively “the best” for every task.
I’m building this challenge around Claude for three reasons:
It writes more like a person out of the box. Less of the “moreover, in conclusion, it is important to note” slop that the other tools default to. For women whose work depends on sounding like themselves, this matters.
The Cowork feature is unique to it. From Day 7 onwards we install the Claude desktop app and use a feature called Cowork that reads your files, edits your files, and takes actions on your computer. ChatGPT and Gemini can’t yet do this in quite the same way. It’s what makes the agent build in Week 4 actually possible.
It’s what I use every day. Across the 30 days I’ll be sharing the exact prompts, screenshots, and shortcuts that work for me. Following along with the same tool means you can copy and paste without translation.
Can you use ChatGPT or Gemini instead? Yes. Some of the prompting techniques translate directly. However, when we get into some of the sexier stuff we will use Claude Cowork, which is on the paid subscription.
Also, worth noting that crucially I will show you how to set up a system that is fully portable - so you can move to a new AI if you wanted to, and the race is still wide open and changing fast. That’s why good foundations really matter.
My recommendation: just use Claude for the 30 days. If you love it, stay. If you don’t, switch back to your tool of choice after Day 30 and you’ll have the same skills, sharper. The systems and setup can be ported to any tool - as to be honest the AI race remains wide open.
The three sides of Claude
There are three ways to use Claude. You don’t need to remember this now. You’ll meet each one when we need it. But for orientation:
Chat lives at claude.ai in any web browser. It’s a conversation. You ask, Claude answers, you go back and forth. Each conversation resets when you close the tab unless you save it as a Project. We use Chat across all of Week 1, in the browser, no install required. Best for: quick questions, drafts, anything you’d ask a smart colleague over the desk.
Cowork is the desktop app, which we install on Day 7. Big difference: Cowork can read your files, edit your files, and take actions on your computer. You hand over a goal (“read this 60-page board pack and tell me what matters”) and it does the work. This is where the agent gets built, the one that lands on your screen at 7am while you’re still in bed. Best for: multi-step tasks, work that involves your real inbox or calendar, anything that would otherwise mean copying things between tabs.
Code is the more powerful sibling of Cowork. It was originally built for software engineers but it’s now used by anyone running serious AI workflows. We touch this lightly in Week 4 when we schedule the agent to run on its own. Don’t be put off by the name. You won’t write code. You’ll write instructions in plain English.
A word on free vs. paid
The free tier caps how many messages you can send each day, and it doesn’t give you reliable access to the smartest model (Opus). So you’ll burn through your daily allowance fast on the side-by-side comparison exercises, and the comparisons themselves won’t be as sharp as they could be.
When we move to the desktop app and start building the agent, free really won’t cut it. Cowork and the scheduled tasks need Pro.
My recommendation. If your budget says no right now, start free and see how you feel by Day 4 or 5. If you want the meaningful version of this challenge, upgrade to Pro. I think it will pay you back ten fold in time and more success. It is the cost of getting build an agent personalised to you.
I’m not pushing you into it. I just want to be honest about what you’ll get for free vs. what you’ll get for paid. Pro is what builds the agent. That’s the whole point.
Install Wispr Flow too
There’s one more tool worth installing today. Wispr Flow.
It’s a voice-to-text tool. You hold a key, talk into your laptop, and whatever you say appears as text wherever your cursor is. Any app. Any text field. Including Claude.
Why this matters across the 30 days. We’re going to ask you to brief Claude properly. Give it the real context. Tell it who you are. Tell it about your audience. Tell it about your business. Doing all that by typing is slow. Doing it by talking is fast, more natural, and almost always sharper. You say things differently than you write them.
By Day 15, when Claude interviews you to build your About Me brief, you’ll be answering in full sentences for ten minutes straight. You do NOT want to type that. You want to talk.
Wispr Flow’s pricing: there’s a free tier with a generous word limit that gets you through the whole challenge comfortably. There’s a paid tier that unlocks more, but you don’t need it for this. Start free.
To download: search “Wispr Flow” and go to their official site. Mac and Windows both supported. Works on your mobile too. Install, grant the microphone and accessibility permissions, set the hotkey. Three minutes.
A note on the other tools we’ll use
A handful of other tools come up across the 30 days. None of them are required. Most have a free tier or a seven-day trial. My standing recommendation is the same for all of them:
Try the free tier or trial first See if the tool earns its place in your work Only invest in the ones that actually help There are real opportunities you unlock when you pay for a subscription. That’s true of most things in life. But I’m not asking you to pay for anything you don’t need.
Be mindful of your budget. Skip what doesn’t fit. The challenge works without any of the optional tools.
Your only job today (two tools, twenty minutes)
1. Get Claude
Go to claude.ai/upgrade in your browser. Sign up or log in (use a personal email if you can. Easier later when we connect calendar and Gmail). Pick Pro at £18/mo if you can. The Free tier works as a starting point if you’d rather. Confirm payment. Open claude.ai in your browser. You should see a chat window.
2. Get Wispr Flow
Search “Wispr Flow” and go to their official site. Download the app for Mac or Windows. Install, then grant the microphone and accessibility permissions when prompted. Both are needed. Set the hotkey. The default is usually Fn or right-Option. Pick whatever feels natural to press while you’re talking. Test it: open any text field, hold the hotkey, say “hello, this is working.” Let go. The text should appear. That’s it.
If anything goes weird at any step in either install, take a screenshot, paste it into a new ChatGPT tab (yes, ChatGPT is fine for this since you don’t have Claude working yet), and ask: “What am I looking at and what do I do next?” We’ll teach this same trick properly on Day 6.
How to share and chat as you go
Two things that make this challenge more fun.
Tag #SwitchedOn when you post.
Whether you’re celebrating something AI helped you build, asking for help, or showing off the output that landed in your inbox, use the hashtag on LinkedIn, Instagram, anywhere. I’ll see it. The cohort will see it.
The sharpest examples get featured in the round-up newsletter at the end of each week.
You can also use #SwitchedOnAIChallenge on platforms where that’s more searchable. Both work. Use whichever feels right.
Know someone who might benefit from going on this AI warm-up to buld confidence? Send her to nishma.co/30daychallenge