The Claude Plugin I built because my brain doesn’t do “normal”
I forget things. Not because I’m careless. Because my brain locks onto one thing so hard that everything else falls out of view. Then at 2 am I sit up in bed, remembering the message I never replied to, the decision I left hanging, the thing I promised someone on Tuesday.
If you think differently, you’ll know that loop. The same wiring that lets us go deep is the wiring that lets the rest of the day drift past unnoticed. It’s not a flaw to be fixed. It’s the trade-off of a brain that does the good stuff most others can’t.
Most productivity advice was built for a brain that isn’t yours
Inbox zero. Process every message. Triage in batches. All of it assumes attention you can switch on and off like a light. And it creates a need for a system to remember actions and track everything your messages drove you to do.
For a neurodiverse leader like me, every “quick check” of Slack or email is a tax on focus and a risk of getting distracted. So we either pay the tax all day and burn out, or we skip it and miss what matters. Both options end the same way: we look inconsistent to people who can’t see how our brain actually works.
I’d been trying to fix the wrong problem. I didn’t need more discipline. I needed a tool to help that respected how my attention actually behaves. I needed the equivalent of spellcheck for my spelling difficulties.
So I built one
Signal Inbox is a small Claude Co-work plugin I made for myself. It saves me from scanning three inboxes. It scans, then hands me one file.
It reads my meeting notes. It reads Gmail. It reads Slack. It writes a markdown brief: what’s happened, what needs me, and what can wait. I open it in Obsidian first thing in the morning, and the day already has a shape. (Or send me the brief in Slack)
Three things changed once I started using it daily.
The 2 am wake-ups stopped. Nothing important is sitting unseen, so my brain stops auditing the day at midnight.
I do the first suggested task immediately. There’s a small kick of momentum from ticking something off before the inbox-tab-switching starts, and that kick now sets the tone for the morning.
I stopped hunting through Slack, Gmail, and Granola for that thing I half-remembered from Tuesday. Now I just ask Claude.
/brief --focus "the pricing change" --deliver slack --since "4 hours ago"
It pulls from notes, mail, and Slack at once and pings me with the answer. The point isn’t the search. The point is, I never have to break focus to find it. I delegate this to them every single day.
“I haven’t got time to set up another tool”
Fair. Most of us have been burned by productivity systems that demand more energy than they give back.
This one is different in one specific way. It’s built on the assumption that your attention is a finite resource to be protected, not a faulty resource to be fixed. You don’t change how you work. You move the scanning to the agent and keep the deep thinking for yourself.
It is a Plugin for Claude Cowork or Claude Code. So you will need Claude to use it. This makes the setup point-and-click, which takes about 2 minutes. After that, it stays out of your way, and you get your morning back.
How to install it
You’ll be installing the Signal Inbox plugin in Claude Co-work and connecting Gmail, Slack, and optionally Granola for meeting notes.
Install via Cowork (recommended)
This route makes future updates one click.
In the desktop Claude app, click “Cowork”.
From the left-hand menu, click “Customize”.
Click the “+” next to “Personal plugins”. Hover over “Create plugin”, then click “Add Marketplace”.
Paste in the GitHub URL:
https://github.com/mrdavemartin/Confidence-In-Freeand click Sync.The marketplace browser opens, filtered to “Anthropic & Partners”. Click “Personal” instead. You’ll see the Confidence In marketplace.
Click into it, find “Signal Inbox”, and click Add.
Choose auto-sync if you want updates handled for you, or leave it manual.
The video below shows the steps in Claude Cowork.
Install from a zip
This option makes it more difficult to get updates, so I recommend the option above.
Download the latest version: https://github.com/mrdavemartin/signal-inbox/archive/refs/heads/main.zip
In Cowork, click the “+” next to “Personal plugins”. Hover over “Create plugin”, then click “Upload Plugin”.
Drag and drop the zip and click upload.
Install via Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add mrdavemartin/Confidence-In-Free
/plugin install signal-inbox@confidence-in-freeConnect the inboxes
Signal Inbox Plugin needs the Claude Gmail and Slack connectors. Granola is optional, but worth it if you take meeting notes there. Maybe if people want it, I will add support for different meeting note tools.
In Cowork, go to Customize, click Connectors, then the “+” to browse and install Gmail, Slack, and (optionally) Granola. Each one will ask for authorisation.
Get your first brief
So you have installed the Plugin, congratulations. Now it is time to check it works and get your first briefing.
In Cowork, click New Task.
Click “Work in a project” and choose a folder.
Type
/brief.
By default, it gives the report inline, looks back 24 hours, and writes in a neutral voice. If you would prefer it writes to a file, simply add a “delivery” option.
/brief --delivery file
Open the file. That’s your day.
Make it sound like you
The default voice is fine. Yours is better. To set the tone for the brief and for any suggested replies, start a Cowork session and type:
/signal-inbox:setup
Five short questions, then Claude saves your voice to a voice.md file. From then on, every brief reads how you’d write.
When something’s off
Type /signal-inbox:doctor in Cowork. It checks the connectors and confirms your voice profile is loaded. That’s almost always all that can go wrong.
Advanced options
There is a set of options that gives you more control. To see the latest advanced options, go to Cowork and type:
/brief --help
I want it to run every morning
Once you trust the brief, automate it.
In Cowork, click “Scheduled” in the left-hand menu.
Click “New Task”.
Name it (e.g. “Daily briefing”) and add a one-line summary.
Click “Work in a project” and choose your folder.
Pick the model. I use Opus.
Choose how often it runs.
Click Save.
Now the brief is waiting for you before you start the day.
The point
This isn’t really about a plugin. It’s about choosing not to bend your brain to fit a system that wasn’t built for it. The way you think is the reason you’re where you are. Anything that protects that thinking is worth ten minutes to set up.
If you try it, tell me how it goes. Drop a comment, or send me a message. If you’ve got an idea for how to make it better, I want to hear it. If I get time, I will add it.
Find out if you suffer from Signal Drift, and learn about how tools like this and others can help you. Take the Signal Drift assessment.