How to build a business operating system from scratch in an afternoon

Last month I cancelled my business management software.

Not because it was bad. It's actually really good. It's just the wrong tool (for me) now. I'm in the launch phase of my new business. My workflow changes weekly. Every feature I'm not using is something that just gets in the way.

So I cancelled it and built my own business operating system.

What "built my own business operating system" actually means:

It was one afternoon.

The whole stack:

• Google Workspace. Already paying for it. Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Sheets. My data already lives here.

• Claude Code. Already paying for it. The thing that turns words into working software.

• A custom Google Workspace app/bot. The bridge between the two.

That's it. No new vendors. No new monthly bills. No new login screen to forget the password to.

Wiring the bot into Workspace, authenticating it, scoping the right permissions, getting it talking cleanly to Claude. That whole setup took me two to three hours. I have been iterating on it every day since, and every iteration is a sentence I type into a chat window.

“Add a column for last-touch date."

"Summarize the last three emails with this client before our call."

"Show me everything I billed in March, broken out by project."

The system does what it does and not one feature more, which is exactly the point.

What it (actually) does

Three things, all on demand:

1. Instant summaries of what's on my radar. I ask, it pulls from the live data (emails, calendar, sheets, docs), and gives me the plain-English picture. No more swiping between five tabs to remember where I left off with a contact.

2. Client updates. Where we are with each client, what the last touch was, what's coming up, what I owe them, what they owe me.

3. Time and billing snapshots. What I worked on, when, and what it should bill out at. Same data Workspace already had, finally readable.

There is no fourth feature. I'll only build it if it's necessary.

The (entire) system

Here's the part I would like you to sit with for a second.

Once the business operating system is set up, it's fully customizable in plain English, and it costs nothing on top of subscriptions I already have.

Customizable in plain English. Not "low-code." Not "drag and drop a trigger here and a webhook there." I type a sentence. Claude writes the change. The entire system can be updated, upgraded, and customized on the fly by lunch-time.

A year ago I would have called this vibe coding. Today I call it something more boring (and more important): agile app deployment. It's the fourth stage of a curve I've been climbing for a while now: prompt engineering, then context engineering, then agentic architecture, and now this. Each stage takes you further from "I asked the AI a question" and closer to "I run my business on software I shaped with my own words."

That's the part some people are still missing. AI isn't just helping write better prompts. AI is letting you operate the software you already pay for in ways that used to require a developer or a $200/month "business automation platform" with three onboarding calls and a Slack channel for support tickets.

What this means for you

Perhaps, you already pay for a CRM, project tracker, or "client OS".

You don't have to cancel your tools tomorrow. But if your workflow is changing, you're early in a launch, pivoting, or just tired of battling software, then consider the option.

The option is: build the thin version of of the software that runs your business. With words. In an afternoon.

You don't need to be a developer. You don't need to know Python. You need a workflow you understand, two subscriptions you already pay for, and three uninterrupted hours.

I'm planning to walk through the exact setup in a future issue: the bot, the scopes, the prompts, what I broke the first time. If that's something you'd actually use, hit reply or drop me a comment on LinkedIn. If enough of you want it, I'll move it up.

Find the leverage,

-Terence

Contact me @ gomodrn.com