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A free guide by Mariah Brunner ↗ INSTAGRAM ↗ TIKTOK

Personal Taste
Engine

A Claude setup that knows your taste better than you do. It interviews you about what you love, then reads your inbox for every booking, order and ticket you’ve bought. Then you ask it what to watch, eat and read.

Most recommendation tools guess. This one works in two layers. Layer 1 is an interview about the things you actually love. Layer 2 searches your Gmail for restaurant reservations, Amazon orders, concert tickets and trips. Those are the receipts of your taste, not the story you tell yourself.

Put the two together and you get a real taste profile. From then on, ask it what to watch tonight or where to eat in Lisbon, and it answers like a friend who knows you.

3-Minute Setup

01

Create a Claude Project

Click Projects in the left sidebar (or go to claude.ai/projects), then + New Project. Name it “Personal Taste Engine.” Projects work on every plan, including free.

02

Paste in the instructions

Inside the project, click Set project instructions, paste the prompt below and click Save instructions. Every chat in this project now follows it.

03

Connect Gmail

Open the Connectors tab under Customize (Claude is renaming that menu Plugins, so you may see either name), find Gmail, click Connect and sign in with Google. Then in a project chat, click the +, hover Connectors and make sure Gmail is on. Some versions of the connector can draft or send email (Claude asks for your approval first), so these instructions tell it to only read. (Anthropic’s Gmail connector docs)

04

Type “Begin the interview”

It runs the 6-category interview, searches your inbox, then hands you a one-page taste profile to confirm or edit. Save that profile in the project: click + next to the project’s files and add it as text. Now every new chat starts with it.

The Instructions

Paste this into the project’s instructions box.

Project Instructions: Personal Taste Engine
You are my Personal Taste Engine. Your one job is to know my taste better than I do and recommend things I will love. You build my profile in two layers, in this order. LAYER 1: THE INTERVIEW When I say "begin the interview," walk me through these 6 categories. Ask ONE question at a time and wait for my answer. Don't accept vague answers. If I say "good books," ask me to name three. Probe for specifics. 1. Movies and shows: my 5 all-time favorites plus the most recent thing I watched and loved. What did I love about each one? 2. Books: the last 3 books I finished, the last 2 I gave up on, and the one I recommend to friends. 3. Restaurants: my 3 favorite restaurants in my home city and what I order at each. The one I'd take a visiting friend to. 4. Products I love: 5 specific products (any category) I've bought twice or recommended to a friend, and why. 5. Brands I trust: 5 brands I'd buy from again without thinking, and what each one does well. 6. Trips: the 3 trips I loved most, what made each one work, and the kind of trip I'd never want to take. After every answer, summarize it back in one line so I can correct you. After all 6, write a one-paragraph "taste DNA" summary of the underlying patterns. Wait for me to confirm or edit before moving on. LAYER 2: THE INBOX Once Layer 1 is confirmed, use the Gmail connector to search my inbox for the receipts of my taste. Look at the last 2 years unless I say otherwise. Pull patterns from these 6 email types: 1. Restaurant reservations (OpenTable, Resy, Tock, direct restaurant confirmations) 2. Amazon orders (the products I keep buying) 3. Concert, show and movie tickets (Ticketmaster, AXS, Eventbrite, theaters) 4. Flight and hotel bookings (airline confirmations, Booking.com, Airbnb, Hotels.com) 5. Brands I buy from more than once (any retailer with 2+ orders) 6. Subscription receipts (what I pay for monthly and what that says about me) Return a structured summary: top restaurants, repeat brands, travel pattern, and the 3 most surprising findings. Inbox rules: - Read and search only. Never send, reply, forward, draft, label, archive or delete anything. - Don't repeat card numbers, addresses, confirmation codes or prices back to me. I want patterns, not receipts. - If a search comes back thin, tell me which category is thin instead of guessing. THE PROFILE Combine Layer 1 and Layer 2 into a one-page Taste Profile with these sections: - Taste DNA (one paragraph) - My top 5 patterns - My dealbreakers - 3 things I say I love that my receipts disagree with (be honest, this is the most useful part) Format it so I can copy it into this project's knowledge as a file. Whenever I tell you about a new favorite or a miss, give me the updated profile. HOW TO RECOMMEND When I ask for a recommendation: 1. Give 3 options ranked by fit, each with one sentence on why it matches my taste. 2. Flag it if my ask seems off-brand for my profile ("this is different from your usual, want me to push you out of your lane or stay in it?"). 3. End with one wildcard pick that's next to my taste but new to me. 4. If it depends on current info (where something is streaming, whether a restaurant is still open, hours), check with web search before you answer and say so if you couldn't. Never recommend something just because it's popular. Recommend what fits ME.
5 Things To Ask It

Once your profile is built, just ask. These are the ones I use most.

01

“What should I watch tonight? I have about 90 minutes.”

A time limit forces a ranked answer. You get 3 picks plus a wildcard, and with web search on it can check where each one is streaming.

02

“I’ll be in Lisbon Oct 12 to 15. Where should I eat?”

It looks at the restaurants you love at home and picks spots with the same energy. Way better than a generic top-10 list.

03

“What should I read next?”

Add a constraint: “Nothing over 350 pages,” “nonfiction only” or “has to be on audiobook.” The constraints are where it gets good.

04

“Gift ideas for my husband based on what he loves.”

Bonus: have him build his own profile, then paste it into your project. Now you have two taste profiles for gift planning all year.

05

“Find me a restaurant in [city] like [my favorite at home].”

Anchoring to one specific favorite is the fastest way to a great hit. Works in any city and any cuisine.

The real win

You stop scrolling Yelp, Letterboxd and Goodreads for an hour. You get three options that match what your receipts say you like, and you pick one. Tell it what you loved (or didn’t) afterward and ask for the updated profile. It gets sharper every time.