How I turned Claude into a self-improving PM assistant | Daniel Blum (PM, Melio)

August 31, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

A self-improving Claude system that learns from your edits and fills your inbox

Daniel Blum, a product manager at Melio, estimates he now does in a day what used to take him a week. But the bigger shift, he says, is that he can do work he simply couldn't do before — deeper research, more data-backed decisions, less operating on hunches. The system he built inside Claude's cowork harness didn't arrive fully formed. It emerged from a specific frustration: the endless overhead of coordinating Slack messages, meeting action items, and shifting priorities that pull a PM away from focused work. "I was getting nowhere near solving it," Blum says, "until I was able to actually build a system with cowork that I'm still a little bit surprised at how powerful it is."

Two anchoring automations that structure the week

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What you'll learn

1 (00:00) **The Core Claim: A Day's Work in an Hour** - Daniel states he can now do in a day what used to take a week, and even tackle work that was previously impossible.
2 (01:26) **Welcome & Episode Setup** - Host Claire Vau introduces guest Daniel Blum and his Claude "Co-Work" system, which is self-healing and self-optimizing.
3 (02:35) **Problem: The Overhead of Being a PM** - Daniel explains the core problem he was trying to solve: the endless chaos of Slack, meetings, and action items that prevent deep work.
4 (04:14) **The Personal AI Stack & The Big Unlock** - Daniel describes his tool stack (Gemini, then Claude Enterprise with Co-Work) and the two critical rules for a powerful system.
5 (06:39) **Live Demo: The Notion Board as a Read-Only Brain** - Daniel shows his Notion board, which is entirely managed by his Claude system.
6 (08:40) **How Context is Built and Maintained** - Daniel explains the scalable process of injecting context into the system.
7 (10:05) **The Weekly Prep: Starting the Week with Clarity** - Daniel walks through his "Weekly Prep" recurring task, which runs on Sunday mornings.

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

Daniel Blum is a product manager at Melio, a B2B payments company, and one of the most systematic thinkers I’ve had on the show when it comes to personal AI infrastructure. He’s spent the past year building a Claude- and Cowork-based productivity system that manages his Notion board, processes his Slack and email, and runs self-improvement loops every week without needing to be prompted. Beyond his own workflow, Daniel built and scaled a “Workstation” onboarding plugin that gets any Melio employee up and running with a personalized Claude setup in about 15 minutes.

What you’ll learn:

Why Daniel says the two rules that make any AI system powerful aren’t about the tool you pick
How his weekly prep automation fills an entire Notion board from scratch every Sunday, without his touching it
The morning brief feature that teaches Claude new internal terms on its own, so company jargon never slows it down
Why he describes Notion as “read-only” now, and what that says about how PM workflows are changing
The self-improvement loop that watches Daniel’s edits, spots recurring friction, and suggests new skills to build
How he uses a skill called “Improve” to filter the endless flood of AI tips without drowning in them
What he built to scale his personal system to every PM at Melio, and the UX lesson he learned the hard way
The capability gap that’s still keeping him from running 100% of his work through Claude

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In this episode, we cover:

(00:00) Daniel’s background and the PM overhead problem he needed to solve

(03:30) His AI stack at Melio

(05:00) The two rules that make any AI system genuinely powerful

(06:00) The Notion board Cowork built for him (and manages on his behalf)

(07:30) How he contextualizes Claude with voice memos, links, and recurring updates

(09:00) His weekly prep automation

(11:00) His mo