A practical guide by Luke Ford
Your AI Coworker.
Day One Setup
I run my business with a team of 27 AI assistants. This is exactly how it's set up, and how to get yours doing real work from the first day. It drafts. You decide.
27 pages · 18 copy-paste prompts · 8 routine recipes · 10 guardrails · 7-day plan · Instant PDF
Most AI assistants stall in the first week.
Not because the AI is bad. Because nobody gave it a job.
You open a chat, ask a few questions, get a decent answer, and go back to doing everything yourself. The assistant can't see your inbox, doesn't know your rules, and forgets you by tomorrow.
The difference between a chatbot and a coworker is setup: what it's connected to, what it remembers, what it's allowed to do on its own, and what it has to run past you first. That setup takes an afternoon. This guide walks you through it.
Who this is for
This is for you if
- You run a small business or work for yourself, and admin eats your week
- You've tried an AI assistant and it never stuck
- You want help with email, meetings, follow-ups, content and reporting, without handing over control
- You'd rather copy a working setup than read about AI in theory
This isn't for you if
- You want an AI that sends, posts and pays with nobody checking
- You're after a coding course or prompt-engineering theory
- You want someone to set it all up for you (see "Rather I set it up?" in the FAQ)
What's inside
27 pages. No fluff, no theory chapters. Every page is something you do.
How my setup actually runs
The team of bots I use, what each one does, and the daily rhythm they run on.
Day one: connect the right things
Email, calendar, files and your CRM, in the order that pays off fastest, plus the one brief to write before anything else.
Memory and standing rules
How to teach it once so it stops making the same mistake, and the rules worth writing on day one.
It drafts, you decide
Approval rules and 10 guardrails, so nothing leaves without your yes.
Routines and 8 recipes
Morning brief, inbox triage, follow-ups, weekly reports, watchers that switch themselves off. Copy, change the times, done.
18 copy-paste prompts, a Day One checklist and a 7-day plan
Plus content kits, handing coding to cloud agents, and the mistakes I made first.
Real pages from the guide.
See all 14 chapters
- Why most AI setups stall
- How my setup actually runs
- Day one: connect the right things
- Memory and standing rules
- It drafts, you decide: approval rules and guardrails
- Routines: work on a schedule
- Routine recipes
- Content without the grind: the daily post kit
- Handing coding to cloud agents
- 18 copy-paste prompts
- Day One checklist
- Your first 7 days
- The mistakes I made first
- Where to from here
It drafts. You decide.
Every assistant in my setup can write the email, prep the meeting, draft the post and queue the follow-up. None of them can send, post, pay or delete without me saying yes.
That one rule is why I trust it with real work. The guide shows you how to set it up, and the 10 guardrails that back it.
What it looks like on a normal day
- Weekday morningsa brief from my chief of staff bot with meetings and what needs me
- About 7:37amthe day's Instagram kit, slides and caption ready for me to post
- Hourly, business hoursLinkedIn outreach inside daily caps, replies drafted for my yes
- About 8:30pman end-of-day update of what got done
Numbers from my own account. Your setup will look different, which is the point.
Free
Not ready for the full guide? Start here.
The Day One checklist: two pages, the four things to connect, the rules to write first, five starter prompts, and what to do on days 2, 3 and 7. Free, straight to your inbox.
Who wrote this
I'm Luke Ford, Founder and CEO of LukeFord.Dev, based in Brookwater, Queensland. I build custom software, web and mobile apps and AI automation for businesses, with 60+ products shipped over 10+ years of engineering.
I also run my own business on a team of AI assistants. This guide is that setup written down: what I connected, the rules I wrote, the routines that run every day, and the mistakes I made first so you don't have to.
Frequently asked questions
No. I use Grok Bot as the worked example because it's what I run, but the setup works with any AI assistant that can connect to your email and calendar, remember instructions and run scheduled tasks.
No. It's my independent guide. It isn't affiliated with or endorsed by xAI, Grok, Cursor or any other vendor.
No. If you can write an email, you can do everything in the guide. The coding chapter is optional and shows how to hand coding jobs to cloud agents, not how to write code.
A 27-page A4 PDF. After you pay you're taken to a download page, and the link is emailed to you straight away. Read it on your phone, laptop or print it.
An afternoon for day one. The 7-day plan spreads the rest across a week, a few minutes a day.
The whole guide is built on approval-first drafting: the assistant drafts, you approve. Chapter 5 covers the 10 guardrails I use, including what never to give it access to.
If it's not useful, email hello@lukeford.dev within 14 days and I'll refund you. Your rights under Australian Consumer Law apply either way.
Yes. Stripe emails a receipt. GST treatment on the receipt matches how the product is configured in Stripe at checkout.
This is edition 1, October 2026. Buyers get free updates to edition 1 by email.
That's my day job. See the AI Admin Assistant and the fixed-price AI Agent Sprint on the homepage, or book a free 30-minute AI audit.
Give your AI a job this week.
27 pages, 18 prompts, a checklist and a 7-day plan. $49 AUD, instant PDF.
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Your AI Coworker: Day One Setup, edition 1, October 2026, by Luke Ford. Independent guide. Not affiliated with or endorsed by xAI, Grok, Cursor or any other vendor. Product names belong to their owners. Licensed for one person's use. Please don't share the file.