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Claude Code for product managers: research, writing, context libraries, custom to-do system, more

Teresa Torres is the author of Continuous Discovery Habits and an internationally acclaimed speaker and coach. In this episode, Teresa demonstrates how she’s built a personalized productivity system using Claude Code to manage her tasks, automate research collection, and improve her writing. She shows how non-developers can leverage AI tools to create personalized workflows that match their unique needs and thinking style. *What you’ll learn:* 1. How Teresa built a personalized task management system in Claude Code that matches her exact workflow needs 2. Why she moved from Trello to a markdown-based system that gives her complete control and searchability 3. How she automated academic research collection with daily digests of relevant papers 4. Her strategy for organizing context files to make Claude more effective without overwhelming it 5. Why “pair programming” with Claude has become her approach to everything from writing to task management 6. How she uses Claude as a writing partner while maintaining her authentic voice 7. The power of slash commands and automation to reduce friction in daily workflows *Brought to you by:* Brex—The intelligent finance platform built for founders: https://brex.com/howiai Graphite—The next generation of code review: https://graphitedev.link/howiai *Detailed workflow walkthroughs from this episode:* • How I AI: Teresa Torres’s Claude Code System for Task Management, Automated Research, and ‘Lazy’ Prompting: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/teresa-torres-claude-code-obsdian-task-management • How to Automate Academic Research with Claude Code and Python Scripts: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/workflows/how-to-automate-academic-research-with-claude-code-and-python-scripts • How to Create a Granular Context Library for ‘Lazy Prompting’ with AI: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/workflows/how-to-create-a-granular-context-library-for-lazy-prompting-with-ai • How to Build a Personalized Task Manager with Claude Code and Markdown: https://www.chatprd.ai/how-i-ai/workflows/how-to-build-a-personalized-task-manager-with-claude-code-and-markdown *In this episode, we cover:* (00:00) Introduction to Teresa Torres (02:10) Why Claude Code became Teresa’s productivity tool of choice (03:00) The evolution from browser-based AI to terminal-based workflows (04:14) Demo: Creating a personalized task management system (07:52) How the task system works with markdown files and Obsidian (12:56) Quick recap (14:13) Taking notes within tasks for better searchability (15:54) Demo: Automated research digest workflow (19:32) How the research plugin searches and summarizes academic papers (24:43) Filtering overwhelming information sources (29:00) Using small, focused context files instead of one large document (32:58) Claude as a writing partner: review, research, and refinement (35:34) Recap of workflows and lightning round *Tools referenced:* • Claude Code: https://claude.ai/ • Obsidian: https://Obsidian.md/ • VS Code: https://code.visualstudio.com/ • Descript: https://www.descript.com/ • ChatGPT: https://chat.openai.com/ • Trello: https://trello.com/ *Other references:* • Continuous Discovery Habits: https://www.producttalk.org/continuous-discovery-habits/ • Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/ • Claude Code: What It Is, How It’s Different, and Why Non-Technical People Should Use It: https://www.producttalk.org/claude-code-what-it-is-and-how-its-different *Where to find Teresa Torres:* Blog: https://producttalk.org/ Podcast: https://justnowpossible.com/ Book: https://www.amazon.com/Continuous-Discovery-Habits-Discover-Products/dp/1736633309 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teresatorres/ *Where to find Claire Vo:* ChatPRD: https://www.chatprd.ai/ Website: https://clairevo.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clairevo/ X: https://x.com/clairevo _Production and marketing by https://penname.co/._ _For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email jordan@penname.co._

Claire VohostTeresa Torresguest
Jan 19, 202643mWatch on YouTube ↗

At a glance

WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT

Teresa Torres uses Claude Code to automate PM workflows daily

  1. Teresa Torres explains why she shifted from browser-based AI and Trello-centric work to Claude Code in the terminal: speed, flexibility, and treating AI like a pair-programming partner for non-coding tasks.
  2. She demos a custom task management workflow built on local markdown files (viewed in Obsidian) and a /today slash command that compiles due/overdue tasks, in-progress ideas, and a daily research digest.
  3. She then shows an automated academic research pipeline (arXiv daily + Google Scholar weekly) that filters results, queues selected PDFs, and generates high-signal summaries focused on methods and effect size via scheduled scripts.
  4. Finally, she shares a scalable “context library” approach—many small, indexed files (style guide, business profile, products, audience, etc.)—so Claude can load only relevant context, enabling “lazy prompting” and faster resets when the model gets stuck.

IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING

5 ideas

Treat Claude Code like a pair-programming partner for everything.

Teresa’s core shift is mindset: once Claude sits “next to” your work in the terminal/VS Code, you can pair-manage tasks, research, and writing the same way engineers pair-program—iteratively and quickly.

Own your work by keeping tasks and notes as local markdown files.

She moved away from Trello as a personal system because notes felt locked in a third-party tool and were hard to search; markdown in a local folder is portable, inspectable, and AI-readable.

A single daily command can assemble your whole day’s operating view.

Her /today slash command compiles due tasks, overdue items, in-progress ideas, and research prompts into a generated “today file,” reducing decision fatigue and UI clicking.

Structure tasks with simple metadata so AI can query them reliably.

Each task is a file with YAML front matter (type, due date, tags). Claude (and scripts) can then accurately find “due today,” “past due,” or “sales-tagged” work without brittle manual filtering.

Let AI do the tagging and taxonomy maintenance, not you.

Instead of relying on human discipline to tag tasks, Claude proposes tags and Teresa refines a tag taxonomy in a project-level Claude.md—co-creating the system while offloading the grunt work.

WORDS WORTH SAVING

5 quotes

By moving my task management to Claude, now Claude sees my tasks, and I can literally start my day and be like, “Claude, what’s on my to-do list that you can just do for me?”

— Teresa Torres

I didn’t have to open a web browser… I literally just typed, like, off-the-cuff notes to Claude.

— Teresa Torres

The search is not that good… Claude will try every permutation of searches till it finds it.

— Teresa Torres

To do context well… we have to document everything in teeny-tiny files.

— Teresa Torres

When Claude gets stuck, I want Claude to go away… ‘Slash clear, we’re starting over.’

— Teresa Torres

Why terminal-based Claude Code beats web chat for workflowsCustom /today slash command and task file schema (YAML front matter)Obsidian as a markdown workspace and file browserAI-assisted tagging and dynamic “views” (e.g., sales pipeline)Embedded notes inside tasks for better retrieval/searchAutomated research digest: arXiv + Google Scholar + PDF summariesModular context libraries: indexes, small files, lazy prompting, /clear resets

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