A step-by-step tutorial for project managers who want Claude to pull the week's project activity and draft a status report automatically — ready for you to review and send.
What this actually does
Every Friday afternoon (or whatever day you choose), Claude wakes up on its own, looks at what happened across your connected tools that week, and writes a draft status report. It drops that draft somewhere you'll see it (your Drive, a Slack DM, a local file) so that by the time you sit down to send your update, 80% of the work is already done.
Important: Claude drafts the report. It does not send it. Anything client- or leadership-facing should get a human read-through before it goes out, and this tutorial makes sure to build it that way on purpose.
What you need before you start
- A paid Claude plan (Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise) — scheduled tasks aren't available on the free tier.
- The Claude Desktop app, with Cowork enabled. Cowork is Claude's agentic mode built for exactly this kind of multi-step, hands-off work.
- At least one connector to the tools your project activity actually lives in such as Google Drive, Slack, Jira, Linear, Asana, Gmail, or similar. Without a connector, Claude has nothing to pull from.
- Your computer needs to be awake with Claude Desktop open at the time the task is scheduled to run. If it's asleep, Claude runs the task as soon as you wake the machine; it doesn't just skip the week.
Step 1: Connect your tools
Before scheduling anything, make sure Claude can actually see your project data.
- Open Claude Desktop and go to Settings → Connectors.
- Connect whatever holds your weekly project activity. Common combinations for PMs:
- Jira / Linear / Asana — ticket movement, completed work, blockers
- Slack — team updates, decisions made in channels
- Google Drive — meeting notes, docs edited that week
- Gmail / Calendar — client or stakeholder threads, meetings held
- Only connect what the report actually needs. Every connector you add is something Claude could read from during the run; keep the footprint tight and intentional.
Step 2: Do one manual run first
Don't schedule the task blind. Run it once manually so you can see what Claude actually produces and correct it before it's on autopilot.
- Open Cowork and click + New task.
- Write out the report prompt in full (see the template below).