Train your butler

What you’ll do: send feedback about the brief itself, by reply.

Steps

Reply to any brief with an opinion about the brief, not a request for the household. For example:

• “Less sport in the news, please.”
• “I don’t need the world news section.”
• “The prepare notes are great, keep them.”
• “Show Mia’s events first.”
• “The money section is too long.”

Your butler saves feedback in a notebook (data/feedback.md). Some of it, like news preferences, shapes the next brief straight away. The rest waits for your weekly tune-up in the next lesson.

What you’ll do: run the tune-up skill, which reads everything that happened and suggests improvements.

Steps

1. Once a week for the first month, then whenever you like, open Claude Code in the Butler folder and type:

2. Claude reads your feedback, your butler’s log, unanswered questions, payments it couldn’t place and how spending compares with the budget.
3. Claude proposes changes, each with a reason. For example:
   • “Three replies asked for less sport. I’ll lower sport in the news interests.”
   • “Payments to ‘Padaria Lisboa’ keep showing up as unknown. I’ll map them to Food.”
   • “Food has been over plan for two months. Raise it from 600 to 700?”
4. Say yes or no to each one.
5. Claude makes the approved changes, runs Butler’s checks and shows a preview.

What you’ll do: learn the three places to look when your butler misbehaves, and the one command that checks everything.

Where problems show up

1. The bottom of the brief. If a section failed, such as the weather or the calendar, the brief still goes out and a short line at the bottom says what failed. One broken part never stops the whole brief.
2. No brief at all. Usually the Mac was asleep, or it lost internet.
3. The log. Your butler keeps a diary in logs/butler.log. You don’t need to read it. Claude can.

The health check

In Claude Code, in the Butler folder, type:

Claude checks Python, your settings, the calendar helper and its permissions, the Keychain entries (without reading them), the schedule, the Mac’s wake time, the log and the last brief. Then it explains each problem in plain words and offers to fix it.

Try it now

Run /butler-doctor while everything works, so you know what a healthy report looks like.

What you’ll do: learn how to update Butler when a new version comes out.

New versions of Butler fix problems and add features. Updating never touches your settings, your budget, your projects or your notes, because those live in folders the download doesn’t include.

Steps

1. When we announce a new version by email or on this site, go to the home page, type your butler’s name and download it again.
2. Open the download, as in Module 0. The Installer replaces the program files and leaves your settings, projects, budget and notes alone.
3. Open Claude Code (butler claude in Terminal) and run the health check:

4. /butler-doctor checks everything still works, and explains anything that doesn’t in plain words.