Here's the honest part: I'm a good talker, not a good writer (that's feedback from others, not me being modest). Give me a stage and a topic in my field, and the dots connect themselves. You read the room, you meet people, you get inspired. Anyone who has been on stage knows what I am talking about.
Writing is a different beast. The back-and-forth to fix a draft usually ends in me publishing nothing at all.
So I treated my own writing setup the way I treat AI in production at work: useful, but not trusted by default. Human in the loop, sources checked, an audit trail of everything.
THE SETUP.
- Claude — a year of using it for everything from technical research to finances to gardening plans (yes, I'm an avid gardener). Long enough that it's learned my actual tone.
- Obsidian — every note, chat and article worth keeping, categorised. My vault of interest.
- NotebookLM — connected with Obsidian, great for inspiration and additional research.
- Custom skills — the off-the-shelf ones made me sound like someone
else. So these are written from scratch or built from my own material:
- About — who I am
- Humaniser — a library of AI fluff and filler that gets stripped out
- Checklist — the workflow and format I prefer
- Style Guide — my tone of voice
- Social Post — a 9-point scrutiniser
- Scorecard — 12 checks for whether the content actually fits the topic
- Claude Agents
- Researcher — red-teams what I've written, checks claims and sources to counter or support the point, and files anything noteworthy back into Obsidian
- Evidence — a library of everything I've ever posted, feeds into Obsidian
ONE THING OUTSIDE THE SYSTEM.
And one outside the system: Copyleaks, to verify that any quote or citation is properly attributed and not passed off as my own thought.
OVERKILL?
Overkill? Probably. But it makes my analytical brain less cringe about hitting publish (facts and process over feelings).
Has this article gone through the above? Absolutely. And the setup, it'll keep changing, like everything else in this space.
That's my setup. How big is yours for writing?