Research & writing · Claude Code

Index your writing archive and repurpose one piece into several formats

Idea + starter prompt, not run by us yet

For: Writers and newsletter owners with years of posts they rarely reuse

A guide says Casey Newton turned 818 past newsletter issues into a searchable index with Claude Code in under 30 minutes. Another writer audited about 1,000 notes in a markdown vault. For repurposing, a single instruction turns one piece into a newsletter, a thread and a summary, all shaped by voice rules kept in CLAUDE.md.

Steps

1. Put your archive in one folder of text or markdown files.
2. Write your voice rules in a CLAUDE.md file.
3. Ask first for a list of what is there and a suggested layout, then approve changes one folder at a time.
4. Avoid broad cleanup requests, which reportedly led to made-up tags.
5. Review each new file before you publish it.

Starter prompt

This folder holds my writing archive. Read CLAUDE.md for my voice rules.

1. Make an index file listing each piece with date, title, topic and a one-line summary. Do not move or edit any files.
2. For [piece name], draft a short newsletter version, a social thread and a summary, each as a new file.

Show me the index plan before writing it. Do not delete or rename anything.

Original post: ccforeveryone.com · found via agentusecases.ai. Written up in our own words. We haven't run it, so test it on made-up data first.