Promote a working skill to something a client owns

From skill to loop to routine: the productization ladder

You already have a working skill — a reusable instruction set that generates ad creative on demand. The next step is to promote it up the ladder: a loop runs on your local machine on a schedule, while a routine runs in the cloud on a schedule and dumps output to a company-accessible folder 1:48:38. The hand-drawn diagram captures the evolution from prompts to skills to loops to routines — a cart becoming a self-driving car 1:49:00. For your agency, this is the difference between a service you perform and an asset the client owns.

The connection-mode selector in Claude Code's dashboard shows the three execution contexts: Local, Cloud, and Remote Control. Routines live in Cloud mode, which is why they survive a closed laptop 0:24:31. When you convert a skill to a loop, you give the model more autonomy — it passes its own previous outputs back through itself to create time-based variation, and Claude uses cron to schedule the daily run 1:47:06.

Wiring Google Drive and GitHub into a routine

To make a routine deliver to a shared folder, you first connect the connectors. The speaker creates a private GitHub repo to hold the routine's code and configuration 1:50:10. Then he connects Google Drive via the connectors settings, authorizes with his Google account, and shares the target folder with anyone with the link 1:51:42. The routine detail page shows the two connectors — Google Drive and Claude_Code_Remote — plus the GitHub repo and the schedule 1:53:13.

Notice the routine is created in a paused/testing state before it goes live. This is the pattern you'll replicate for clients: connect the storage, point the routine at a repo, and test before scheduling.

Dated subfolders and shared Drive output

Once the routine runs, it generates ads and uploads them to a dated subfolder in Google Drive, making them accessible to team members via the shared link 1:54:45. The Drive view shows the uploaded ad image ad_01.png alongside other ad PNGs 1:54:39. This is the moment the skill becomes a client-owned asset: the output lands in a folder the client can see, without you being online.

For your agency, this is the deliverable: a shared Drive folder that fills itself on schedule. The client owns the folder, the routine, and the output — you own the setup.

Product Ad Gen: a second routine from the same template

The same pattern scales to a different product line. The speaker asks Claude to turn "product ad genen" into a routine mirroring the Maker School ads system, generating a Google Drive folder with a dated subfolder, and querying the existing routine for structure 2:28:41. He adds a new API key to the routine's default environment in ENV format so it applies to all new sessions 2:27:00. The resulting routine is active, scheduled daily at 5:59 AM PDT, with Google Drive and manual, API, and webhook run options 2:31:22.

The environment variable holds the API key without exposing it to the model — Claude only knows the variable name, preventing prompt-injection leaks 2:13:10. This is the security pattern you'll reuse for every client routine.

Productizing the full pipeline: the client-owned daily batch

The UGC video routine is the culmination: it lists files in the asset drive folder, determines which are new, builds the cross of every influencer times product, generates a hero frame for each pairing, writes 10 ad-copy candidates, selects the best, determines video duration by word count, generates three video candidates per pairing, and inserts the results into the Google Drive link 3:09:15. The routine appears as "UGC video ads daily batch" with Google Drive folder-creation and asset-upload instructions 3:09:44. The speaker claims this pipeline runs for cents on the dollar every day, cheaper than a production studio 3:10:16.

Your rule for client work: any skill that runs more than once a week becomes a routine with a Drive connector and a dated subfolder. That's the win — the client owns the output, the schedule, and the folder, and it runs without your laptop.

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One-sentence summary

Convert a working skill into a cloud routine that delivers to shared Drive, so the client owns the output and it runs without your laptop.

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