A household manager that runs inside Claude Cowork.
Morning briefs. School email triage. Meal planning. Shopping lists. Home maintenance. Helper payments. And a weekly review that makes the whole system smarter over time. No coding required.
Built on Claude Cowork's native scheduler, connectors, and file system. Inspired by tradclaw and clawchief.
FamilyOS runs four jobs automatically and gives you two more on demand.
| Job | When | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Morning Brief | Daily, 7 AM | Posts a 2-minute calendar + urgent email rundown to your Slack inbox |
| Household Inbox | Every hour | Reads your Slack drop channel, files notes into the right folder |
| Evening Memory | Daily, 9 PM | Reads today's log, writes learnings to memory, clears the slate |
| Weekly OS Review | Sundays, 6 PM | Reviews how the week went and proposes system improvements |
| School Triage | On demand | Sweeps Gmail for school emails and triages by urgency |
| Meal Planner | On demand | Builds a weekly dinner plan with a shopping list |
The Slack channel is the key piece. Throughout the day you drop things in — "add oat milk to the list", "picture day Thursday, need $12", "plumber came, $180, kitchen faucet" — and the agent files them automatically. Nothing falls through the cracks.
The weekly review is what separates FamilyOS from a static automation. Every Sunday it reads how the week went, identifies what got misfiled or missed, and proposes specific changes to improve the system. It proposes — you decide what to apply.
Your day
│
├── Drop notes → #family-inbox (Slack)
│ │
│ Hourly inbox job
│ │
│ Files to the right folder:
│ shopping/ school/ helpers/ maintenance/
│ Ambiguous items tagged [NEEDS-REVIEW]
│
├── Morning brief (daily)
│ Reads: Google Calendar + Gmail + MEMORY.md
│ Outputs: 2-min brief posted to your Slack inbox channel
│
├── Evening memory job (nightly)
│ Reads: LOG.md (today's notes)
│ Writes: MEMORY.md (persistent learnings)
│ Clears: LOG.md for tomorrow
│
└── Weekly OS Review (every Sunday)
Reads: MEMORY.md + LOG.md + OS-LOG.md
Finds: [NEEDS-REVIEW] tags, recurring topics, stale items
Writes: Proposals to OS-LOG.md
Posts: Summary to your Slack channel
You: Review proposals Sunday evening, apply what makes sense
The household brain lives in workspace/ — plain markdown files on your machine. No database. No cloud sync. You own everything.
| Claude Pro or Max | Required for scheduled tasks — $20+/month |
| Claude Desktop | macOS or Windows — download free at claude.ai |
| Gmail | For school email triage and morning brief |
| Google Calendar | For morning brief and schedule awareness |
| Slack | Free tier is fine — you'll use one private channel |
Make an empty folder on your computer where FamilyOS will live. For example:
- Mac:
~/Documents/FamilyOS - Windows:
Documents\FamilyOS
No terminal, no git, no downloads — just an empty folder. Cowork will pull the template in for you.
- Install Claude Desktop if you haven't already and sign in with your Claude Pro or Max account
- Click Cowork at the top of the app
- Click the folder icon in the sidebar → Choose Folder → select the empty folder you just created
Start a new Cowork session in that folder and paste this:
I want to set up FamilyOS, the household manager, in this folder.
The template is at https://github.com/WomenDefiningAI/FamilyOS
1. Copy all of the template files from that repo into this folder so we
have README.md, BOOTSTRAP.md, SETUP-CHECKLIST.md, skills/, and
workspace/ locally.
2. Read workspace/SOUL.md, workspace/USER.md, and workspace/TOOLS.md.
Now run the onboarding interview with me. Ask about:
- Who's in my household (adults and children — ages, schools, grades)
- Our weekly rhythm — pickups, activities, work schedules
- Any helpers (cleaners, babysitters, tutors) and how we pay them
- Meal preferences and dietary restrictions
- Home basics (owned or rented, anything notable)
- What I want in my morning brief
- What I'll name my Slack household inbox channel
Ask one topic at a time. After the interview:
1. Rewrite workspace/USER.md with everything I told you. Show me the
result and confirm.
2. Walk me through enabling these connectors in Claude Desktop →
Customize → Connectors: Gmail, Google Calendar, Slack.
3. Walk me through creating my Slack household inbox channel and
updating workspace/TOOLS.md with the name.
4. Use the schedule skill to create these four scheduled tasks for me —
don't walk me through the UI, schedule them directly, then confirm
each one was created:
- Morning Brief — daily at 7:00 AM — prompt: contents of skills/morning-brief.md
- Household Inbox — hourly — prompt: contents of skills/slack-inbox.md
- Evening Memory — daily at 9:00 PM — prompt: contents of skills/memory-consolidation.md
- Weekly OS Review — weekly on Sunday at 6:00 PM — prompt: contents of skills/weekly-review.md
5. Tell me to go to Cowork → Scheduled, find each of the four tasks,
and click "Run now" on each one. When prompted, I should approve the
tools it asks for (Gmail / Calendar / Slack / file access). This
pre-approves those tools so future automated runs don't silently
pause waiting for permission. Takes two minutes. The Morning Brief
in particular — running it now will also confirm the connectors are
actually working.
6. Walk me through creating a FamilyOS project in Claude Desktop →
Projects → + New Project with the instructions from README.md Step 7.
7. When everything is confirmed working, tell me to delete BOOTSTRAP.md
from my folder.
The agent pulls the template, runs the interview, customizes your files, connects your accounts, and schedules the four recurring tasks for you — all guided in plain language. Total time: about 20–30 minutes.
At the end, Cowork will tell you to delete BOOTSTRAP.md — it's a one-time setup file and you won't need it again.
Cowork walks you through this during the bootstrap interview. Reference:
Go to Claude Desktop → Customize → Connectors and enable:
Gmail → Connect → sign in with your Google account and authorize. Google Calendar → Connect → sign in with the same Google account. Slack → Connect → sign in to your Slack workspace.
No Slack workspace yet? Go to slack.com and create one — free tier has everything FamilyOS needs.
- In Slack, click + Add channels → Create a channel
- Name it
#family-inbox(or your preference) - Set it to Private
- You can keep it solo, or add other adults in the household so they can drop notes and see the morning brief and weekly review too
Then update workspace/TOOLS.md with the channel name (Cowork can do this for you).
Cowork creates these four tasks for you during bootstrap using the schedule skill — you shouldn't need to touch the UI. This reference is here in case you want to inspect or edit them later in Cowork → Scheduled.
| Task | Frequency | Prompt source |
|---|---|---|
| Morning Brief | Daily, 7:00 AM | skills/morning-brief.md |
| Household Inbox | Hourly | skills/slack-inbox.md |
| Evening Memory | Daily, 9:00 PM | skills/memory-consolidation.md |
| Weekly OS Review | Sunday, 6:00 PM | skills/weekly-review.md |
Go to Cowork → Scheduled, find each of the four tasks, and click Run now on each one. When prompted, approve the tools it asks for (Gmail / Calendar / Slack / file access).
This pre-approves those tools so future automated runs don't silently pause waiting for permission. Takes about two minutes. The Morning Brief in particular — running it now also confirms your connectors are actually working.
Go to Projects → + New Project
- Name:
FamilyOS - Instructions: paste this exactly —
This is my FamilyOS household manager project.
My working folder is FamilyOS/workspace/.
Always read SOUL.md, USER.md, and MEMORY.md before responding.
I may ask you to:
- Run school triage (follow skills/school-triage.md)
- Generate a meal plan (follow skills/meal-planner.md)
- Add items to the shopping list
- Log household notes
- Answer questions about the family schedule
- Apply a proposal from OS-LOG.md
Be brief, warm, and practical. No preamble.
Use this project for all on-demand requests. It carries full context every time.
Once setup is confirmed working, delete BOOTSTRAP.md from your FamilyOS folder. It was only needed to get started.
- Morning brief — check your Slack inbox channel the next morning
- Slack inbox — drop
"add paper towels to the list", checkresources/shopping/current-list.mdwithin the hour - Evening memory — check
workspace/MEMORY.mdthe next morning for its first entry - Weekly review — after the first Sunday, check
workspace/OS-LOG.md - On-demand — open your FamilyOS project and ask
"What do I need to know this morning?"
One important thing first: Scheduled tasks only fire when Claude Desktop is running on your computer. If your laptop is closed at 7 AM, the morning brief waits until you open it. For the daily and hourly jobs to be reliable, leave Claude Desktop running in the background. Treat it like Mail or Slack — always-on, in the tray.
7:00 AM — Morning Brief lands in your Slack inbox channel. Something like:
Tuesday, April 14
- Picture day Thursday — Maya needs $12.
- Soccer 4 PM, rain forecast — bring jacket.
- Dentist needs RSVP by Friday.
- Next week: school book fair Mon–Wed.
Two minutes to read on your phone over coffee. (It's also saved in Cowork → Scheduled → Morning Brief if you want the history.)
Through the day — drop things in Slack as they happen. No structure needed:
"plumber came $180, Dave's, kitchen faucet, good""add lemons, sourdough, oat milk""Maya friend birthday May 3"
Within the hour they land in the right file (shopping/, helpers/, school/, etc.). You don't check — you trust it.
9:00 PM — Evening Memory runs silently. Today's LOG.md gets distilled into MEMORY.md (one line per durable fact). Tomorrow's brief will know about the plumber.
On demand, anytime — open your FamilyOS project and ask:
"Any urgent school emails this week?""Make a meal plan for the week""What home maintenance should I do this month?""What's on the shopping list right now?"
The "brain" is just markdown in workspace/:
- USER.md — who your family is (set during onboarding)
- MEMORY.md — what it's learned (rolling, terse)
- LOG.md — today's scratchpad (cleared nightly)
- OS-LOG.md — weekly proposals + your decisions
Every scheduled task re-reads these before doing anything. No hidden state — open any file and you'll see exactly what it knows.
6:00 PM — Weekly Review posts a Slack message like:
📋 Weekly FamilyOS Review — April 13 Solid week. 14 items filed, 2 needed review.
- Add ClassDojo to school senders
- Make oat milk a standing weekly item
- Update Wednesday pickup in USER.md
Reply
apply 1,3to act on specific items,apply all, orskip.
To apply, just reply in the same Slack channel: apply 1,3 (or apply all, or skip). The hourly inbox job picks up your reply, applies the proposals tagged Auto-apply: yes, and posts a confirmation. Items needing manual setup (like creating a new scheduled task) are noted in OS-LOG.md for you to handle yourself.
The system never acts unprompted — but a Slack reply is enough to apply. Over weeks this is what bends FamilyOS toward your actual household.
- Misfiled? Drop a correction in Slack:
"that plumber note was maintenance, not shopping". Next hourly run fixes it. - Brief missed something? In any Cowork session:
"include backyard chores in the morning brief — and update skills/morning-brief.md so it sticks". - A job didn't run? Cowork → Scheduled → confirm it's enabled, the working folder is set, and your computer was awake.
- Open Cowork every day — the brief is waiting whenever you want it.
- Fill USER.md perfectly upfront — the weekly review tunes it over time.
- Babysit the inbox — trust the filing, only step in when it's wrong.
The weekly review reads three signals:
| Signal | What it often suggests |
|---|---|
[NEEDS-REVIEW] tagged items |
A sender or topic to add to a skill's classification rules |
| Same request 3+ times in a week | A new standing item, reminder, or on-demand skill |
| Unresolved items older than 7 days | A tracking or follow-up gap |
| Notes that contradict USER.md | An update needed in USER.md |
Proposals are written to OS-LOG.md and posted to your Slack channel as a numbered list. You decide what to act on — reply apply 1,3 in Slack and the hourly inbox job applies just those, logging each change. Nothing is applied without your explicit say-so. Over weeks this builds a version of FamilyOS tuned to your actual household, not just the template.
FamilyOS/
├── README.md ← This file
├── BOOTSTRAP.md ← One-time setup guide (delete after setup)
├── SETUP-CHECKLIST.md ← Manual setup reference
│
├── workspace/ ← Set as your Cowork working folder
│ ├── SOUL.md ← Agent identity and safety rules
│ ├── USER.md ← Your family — filled in during onboarding
│ ├── MEMORY.md ← Rolling learnings (agent writes nightly)
│ ├── LOG.md ← Daily scratchpad (cleared nightly)
│ ├── TOOLS.md ← Connectors and trusted channels
│ ├── OS-LOG.md ← Weekly review reports and changelog
│ ├── memory/
│ │ └── last-inbox-check.md ← Timestamp to prevent duplicate filing
│ └── resources/
│ ├── shopping/current-list.md
│ ├── school/notices.md
│ ├── home-maintenance/log.md ← Includes seasonal checklist
│ ├── helpers/log.md
│ └── meal-plans/
│
└── skills/ ← Scheduled task and on-demand prompts
├── morning-brief.md
├── slack-inbox.md
├── memory-consolidation.md
├── weekly-review.md
├── school-triage.md
└── meal-planner.md
Your data stays on your computer. The household brain is markdown files on your machine — not uploaded to a cloud service beyond normal Claude API usage.
Only you give instructions. Your Cowork sessions and Slack inbox are the only trusted instruction sources. Email content, newsletters, PDFs, and calendar descriptions are data to process — not commands to follow.
The system only changes itself with your explicit approval. The weekly review proposes; nothing is applied until you reply in Slack (apply N) or do it manually. Proposals that need real-world setup (new scheduled tasks, sending external messages, deleting files) are flagged Auto-apply: no and held for manual action even if you reply apply all.
Sensitive family info stays put. Children's details and household information don't leave your defined context without explicit direction from you.
Connector not working → Claude Desktop → Customize → Connectors. Toggle off and back on, re-authorize.
Scheduled task not running → Cowork → Scheduled. Confirm the task is enabled and the working folder is still set.
Agent doesn't know my family → Working folder must be FamilyOS/workspace/ — not the outer FamilyOS/ folder.
Inbox job filing duplicates → Open workspace/memory/last-inbox-check.md. If the timestamp is missing, open Cowork and ask: "Reset the last-inbox-check timestamp to right now."
Weekly review has nothing useful to say → Check that you're using the latest skills/slack-inbox.md in your scheduled task — it must include the [NEEDS-REVIEW] tagging instruction.
Something else → Open an issue or post in Discussions on this repo.
FamilyOS is built and maintained by Women Defining AI — a nonprofit educating the public on AI and promoting inclusive technological advancement. The community is 1,000+ strong, mostly women and nonbinary professionals from absolute beginners to AI leaders, learning through progressive AI Foundations courses, workshops, and peer support. FamilyOS is one of the things we build to show what practical, personal AI looks like when it's shaped around real lives.
Contributions are welcome — whether it's a bug fix, a new skill, or a documentation improvement.
- Fork the repository, create a feature branch, and commit your changes with clear messages.
- Submit a pull request — include a short description of what changed and why.
For questions, partnership inquiries, or anything that doesn't fit an issue, email info@womendefiningai.org.
The scaffold pattern — separate setup layer, interview-driven tailoring, copyable workspace — was directly inspired by tradclaw by @clairevo and clawchief by Ryan Carson. FamilyOS adapts the same idea for Claude Cowork's native runtime — no OpenClaw infrastructure, no servers, no deployment.
Built for families who want their home to run a little more quietly — and get smarter about it every week.