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A free guide by Mariah Brunner ↗ INSTAGRAM ↗ TIKTOK

Build Your Own
Idea Department

A dashboard that pulls the top stories in your niche from 6 places twice a week and ranks your 30 best content ideas. Here’s how to set up mine yourself in Claude.

Keeping up with your niche is a job on its own, and coming up with ideas on top of that is harder. So I handed both to Claude. My Idea Department reads Instagram Reels, X posts, Substack, my email newsletters, Reddit and podcasts, keeps only what got real traction this week, and gives me 30 ideas ranked best first.

Want It Done For You?

The ready-made Idea Department dashboard is in Avori, the AI workspace I built, and you can personalize it to your niche. You can get it free inside the platform. There’s a 7-day free trial, and once you’re in, every single thing in the Avori marketplace is free. The rest of this guide is the build-it-yourself path.

You need a paid Claude plan (Pro, Max, Ultra, Team or Enterprise), because artifacts that use your connected apps and scheduled tasks aren’t on Free. Plus a free Apify account. Budget about an hour for setup.

The House Rule

We don’t knock off people’s content around here. These ideas are inspiration. Your opinion and your story are the video, and when you build on someone’s take, credit them by name.

1. One-Time Setup

Every connector lives in the same place. In Claude, open Customize (being renamed Plugins, so you may see either), go to Connectors, click + and search for the name. I walk through what each one does in my favorite connectors guide.

01

Apify for Instagram and X

Connect Apify and sign in to approve it (Apify’s setup page). Apify runs ready-made scrapers called Actors. Claude can find them on its own, but these are the two I’d use.

  1. Instagram: Instagram Reel Scraper. It has a setting to only grab reels newer than a date, like "7 days," and returns views and likes for each one. Reach is private, so views are the best public number you get.
  2. X: Tweet Scraper V2. It takes a minimum like count and date filters inside the search, like from:handle since:2026-11-02. On Apify’s free plan it’s capped at 5 runs a month and 10 posts per run, so twice a week needs a paid plan.

Apify’s free plan includes $5 of usage a month, and Starter is $19 a month (pricing). The Reel scraper lists about $2.60 per 1,000 reels on the free plan, so a few dozen accounts twice a week fits inside the free credit. Set the Apify tools to Always allow, because artifacts can’t use tools that ask permission for every action.

02

Gmail for your newsletters

Connect Gmail. My Gmail guide has the full click path. Tip: put a Gmail label like Newsletters on the ones you want counted, so Claude reads those and skips the rest. The prompts tell Claude to read only, so decline anything that asks to send.

03

Exa for podcasts, Substack and Reddit

Connect Exa. It searches the web and reads any page you point it to, and it works without an Exa key at a free rate limit (Exa docs). It finds new episodes and pulls the transcript when the show posts one online. If it doesn’t, Claude works from the show notes.

Substack and Reddit are public, so Exa just reads their feeds. A Substack feed is the newsletter address plus /feed, like name.substack.com/feed. A subreddit’s top posts of the week are at reddit.com/r/name/top/.rss?t=week. Reddit sometimes blocks automated readers, so if that happens, ask Claude to search Reddit through Exa instead.

04

Turn on code execution

Go to Settings, then Capabilities, and turn on code execution and file creation. Interactive artifacts need it.

2. Build Your Dashboard

01

Tell Claude your niche

Start with sources. Claude suggests accounts, subreddits, newsletters and podcasts, and you cut anyone you wouldn’t learn from. Save the final list in a Project so every chat can see it.

Pick My Sources
I make content about [your niche] for [who you make it for]. Help me pick the sources for my Idea Department. I want 8 Instagram accounts and 8 X accounts in my niche that get big views, 5 subreddits, 5 Substack newsletters and 5 podcasts that put out new episodes every week. Only pick ones that posted in the last month, and give me the link for each. Then search my Gmail for newsletters I already get on this topic and list the senders. Put it all in one list called My Idea Sources so I can reuse it.

02

Build the Idea Department

Same chat or same Project, paste this. The first time the dashboard uses an app, Claude shows which apps and tools it wants and asks you to allow them.

Idea Department Build
Build me an interactive dashboard artifact called Idea Department that finds my 30 best content ideas from the last 7 days, using My Idea Sources. Use my Apify connection to pull Instagram Reels and X posts from those accounts and keep only the posts with the most views and likes. Use Gmail to read my newsletters, and use Exa to read my Substack feeds, the top posts of the week in my subreddits, and new podcast episodes with their transcripts. Show each idea as a card with the source, the views or likes, a one-line summary and the link to the original, ranked best first. Give every card a Save button that keeps my saved ideas in a Saved tab between visits, and add a Refresh button. Keep it read only, so never send, delete or change anything in my email or accounts. Before each refresh, tell me roughly how much Apify credit it will use.
↓ Download all 4 prompts (.md)

It saves to the Artifacts tab in your sidebar, and saved ideas stay put between visits (how artifacts store data). If the Refresh button times out, since scrapes can take a few minutes, run the refresh prompt below in a chat instead. More on connected dashboards in my live artifacts guide.

3. Run It Twice A Week

Claude’s scheduled tasks run in the cloud, so your Idea Department keeps working with your laptop closed.

  1. On newer accounts, paste the prompt below into any chat. Claude asks a couple of questions, shows you the name, schedule and instructions, and you click Schedule.
  2. If you still see Cowork, click Scheduled in the left sidebar and then New task. Choose Create with Claude and paste the prompt.
  3. If it only offers one day a week, make two weekly tasks, one Monday and one Thursday.
Twice-A-Week Refresh
Every Monday and Thursday at 7am, refresh my Idea Department. Pull the last 7 days from My Idea Sources with Apify, Gmail and Exa, and keep only the posts with the most views and likes. Rank the 30 best ideas for my audience, skipping anything I already saved. For each one, give me the source, the views or likes, the link and one line on why it would work for me. Update my Idea Department dashboard if you can, and if you can't, give me the ranked list here. Read only, never send or change anything.

Each run shows up under Scheduled, where you can open it, edit it, pause it or run it on demand. Every run uses your Claude plan and a little Apify credit.

4. Save, Talk, Film

01

Save the ideas you like

Skim the 30 and hit Save on the ones that make you react. If you have an opinion about it, it’s a video. If you don’t, skip it.

02

Send Claude a voice note

Open the saved idea, tap the microphone in the Claude app and just talk. What do you think, where do you disagree, and what happened to you that proves it? Then run this so Claude shapes it into your angle.

Voice Note To Angle
Here's my voice note about an idea I saved: [dictate or paste it here]. The original post is here: [link]. Turn my rambling into my own take, in my words and my voice. Give me one scroll-stopping hook, a 5-beat outline and a closing line. Use my opinion and my stories, never the original creator's wording, structure or examples. If my take is too close to theirs, tell me and push me to find what I actually think. If I'm building on their point, add a line that credits them by name.

03

Film it

Your hook and outline are ready. Want Claude to test the hook first? My content creator skills include a hook tester. And for a quick look at the AI updates I think are worth knowing, see this AI news roundup.

Skip The Setup

Prefer one click? The Idea Department dashboard is ready in Avori. Get it free inside the platform with the 7-day free trial, and every single thing in the Avori marketplace is free once you’re in.