The real payoff for having an SOP is that you can start handing pieces of it off. I built a scheduled Claude skill that checks my Notion podcast planner for episodes marked ready to publish, pulls the video and the MacWhisper transcript out of Google Drive, writes the description and show notes, and uploads everything to RSS.com scheduled for the date I picked.
It runs Wednesday overnight so I can review the episodes Thursday morning before they drop. Three things make it reliable: knowing my own process cold, giving it strict instructions for writing and link gathering, and an API that actually works.
Resources & Links
- Get my full podcast production SOP — streamlined.fm/sop
- RSS.com — the host for this show; video support and the API behind this automation (affiliate link)
- Claude — where the scheduled skill runs
- MacWhisper — watches the folder and transcribes each episode automatically
- Notion — my podcast planner
00:00:00 --> 00:00:02 In the last episode, I talked to you about the
00:00:02 --> 00:00:05 importance of having a standard operating procedure
00:00:05 --> 00:00:08 as a way for you to save a bunch of time in your
00:00:08 --> 00:00:12 production process by not having to waste mental
00:00:12 --> 00:00:15 cycles figuring out what to do next. But at the
00:00:15 --> 00:00:17 end of that episode, I teased another reason
00:00:17 --> 00:00:21 to have a step by step document for how to publish
00:00:21 --> 00:00:25 a show, and it's that it will unlock ways for
00:00:25 --> 00:00:30 you to automate. or delegate or even use AI in
00:00:30 --> 00:00:33 your process. And that's what I want to talk
00:00:33 --> 00:00:38 to you about today. See, a while back, I realized
00:00:38 --> 00:00:42 that with the host for this episode, RSS .com,
00:00:42 --> 00:00:46 there is a fantastic API that supports video,
00:00:46 --> 00:00:50 by the way, if you're on the Max plan. And I
00:00:50 --> 00:00:54 could use that API to straight up just record
00:00:54 --> 00:00:58 these episodes. then let Claude take care of
00:00:58 --> 00:01:02 the rest. And so today I am going to walk you
00:01:02 --> 00:01:07 through that scheduled skill that I have in Claude.
00:01:08 --> 00:01:13 Let's start at the beginning. Now, I log ideas
00:01:13 --> 00:01:17 and I usually record three or four of these episodes
00:01:17 --> 00:01:21 right in a row. And so... When I record them,
00:01:22 --> 00:01:25 I save them in a very specific naming convention
00:01:25 --> 00:01:32 of season -episode -slug. So this one is going
00:01:32 --> 00:01:38 to be 07 -10AISOP or something like that, right?
00:01:38 --> 00:01:43 So that is the important part. As I'm giving
00:01:43 --> 00:01:47 the file name something relevant. to the rest
00:01:47 --> 00:01:51 of the process. I have all of my episodes in
00:01:51 --> 00:01:54 a planner in Notion. I've talked about the importance
00:01:54 --> 00:01:58 of having a podcast planner, and the reason is
00:01:58 --> 00:02:03 once I drop a file into my Google Drive folder
00:02:03 --> 00:02:08 for this podcast, the status of the episode in
00:02:08 --> 00:02:12 the planner updates to ready for publish, which
00:02:12 --> 00:02:15 is strange, right? Because there's still a whole
00:02:15 --> 00:02:18 bunch of things that need to happen. But all
00:02:18 --> 00:02:20 of those things happen on the back end. I do
00:02:20 --> 00:02:24 the editing. I save the file with the naming
00:02:24 --> 00:02:26 convention. I put it into Google Drive. A couple
00:02:26 --> 00:02:28 of other things happen when I save it, right?
00:02:28 --> 00:02:31 I use an app called Mac Whisper, which can watch
00:02:31 --> 00:02:36 folders and transcribe episodes once the file
00:02:36 --> 00:02:41 is in the folder. So a transcript is also automatically
00:02:41 --> 00:02:44 created. An older version of this Claude skill
00:02:44 --> 00:02:47 created the transcript, but Mac Whisper is much
00:02:47 --> 00:02:48 better. It doesn't burn as many tokens, gives
00:02:48 --> 00:02:51 you something more accurate automatically. So
00:02:51 --> 00:02:54 with those two things, I have this scheduled
00:02:54 --> 00:02:58 skill called Streamlined Podcaster Weekly go
00:02:58 --> 00:03:02 every Wednesday evening. I pick Wednesday evenings
00:03:02 --> 00:03:05 because I usually publish these shows on a Friday
00:03:05 --> 00:03:09 and so I am either recording them on a Friday
00:03:09 --> 00:03:14 or a Monday and then the skill will do its thing.
00:03:14 --> 00:03:18 So what the skill does is it looks in Notion
00:03:18 --> 00:03:23 for every episode that is set to the status ready
00:03:23 --> 00:03:27 for publish. The file name is also attached in
00:03:27 --> 00:03:31 Notion. So it will go in, grab the video file
00:03:31 --> 00:03:34 and the transcript. It will take that transcript
00:03:34 --> 00:03:39 and generate a two to four sentence description
00:03:39 --> 00:03:43 plus create the show notes. And one of the things
00:03:43 --> 00:03:45 it does for the show notes is compares the links
00:03:45 --> 00:03:49 against my affiliate links file that I also have
00:03:49 --> 00:03:52 saved in Claude so that it uses my affiliate
00:03:52 --> 00:03:56 links as needed. So it will create the description
00:03:56 --> 00:03:59 and the affiliate links and it will pull the
00:03:59 --> 00:04:02 call to action out of the transcript. It will
00:04:02 --> 00:04:05 take all of that and then it will save it to
00:04:05 --> 00:04:10 Notion and talk to the RSS .com API. So we'll
00:04:10 --> 00:04:13 upload the video and then it will grab the date
00:04:13 --> 00:04:16 from Notion. So it schedules it for the date
00:04:16 --> 00:04:19 that I've decided I want to publish it at 9 a
00:04:19 --> 00:04:22 .m. Eastern time is the time that I prefer to
00:04:22 --> 00:04:26 have these published. It grabs the season number
00:04:26 --> 00:04:30 and episode number from the file name and it
00:04:30 --> 00:04:33 uploads the show notes. and then it schedules
00:04:33 --> 00:04:36 it. It will do this for every episode. And then
00:04:36 --> 00:04:39 on Thursday mornings, before they publish on
00:04:39 --> 00:04:41 Friday, or at least the next one publishes on
00:04:41 --> 00:04:45 Friday, I can check all of those episodes to
00:04:45 --> 00:04:47 make sure they are done right, to make sure the
00:04:47 --> 00:04:50 description doesn't stink, to make sure the links
00:04:50 --> 00:04:53 are correct. But all of that can be done from
00:04:53 --> 00:04:58 the RSS .com dashboard now. No copying and pasting.
00:04:58 --> 00:05:01 No worrying about transferring the files myself.
00:05:01 --> 00:05:03 No sitting and waiting for a file to upload.
00:05:04 --> 00:05:08 This all happens overnight while I sleep for
00:05:08 --> 00:05:12 me to check the next morning. This is an incredible
00:05:12 --> 00:05:16 skill, and it's one that I can reliably do thanks
00:05:16 --> 00:05:20 to a few things. The first is knowing my process.
00:05:20 --> 00:05:23 I know how I want these episodes to be published.
00:05:23 --> 00:05:26 The second is giving it specific instructions.
00:05:27 --> 00:05:30 for a simple enough description. Claude usually
00:05:30 --> 00:05:32 has very strict instructions not to write for
00:05:32 --> 00:05:35 me, but what it's doing is creating a summary.
00:05:35 --> 00:05:38 And I fully recognize that I could be writing
00:05:38 --> 00:05:42 better show notes, but I also know that most
00:05:42 --> 00:05:46 places aren't optimizing, like most places where
00:05:46 --> 00:05:50 podcasts live, most directories are not optimizing
00:05:50 --> 00:05:53 for description searches. YouTube is the only
00:05:53 --> 00:05:56 place that does that. And let's be honest, YouTube
00:05:56 --> 00:05:59 is usually pulling from the transcript for searches
00:05:59 --> 00:06:02 anyway. So the description could be better. But
00:06:02 --> 00:06:06 at this point, descriptions aren't super important
00:06:06 --> 00:06:10 from a searchability or discoverability standpoint.
00:06:11 --> 00:06:14 It is from a packaging standpoint. And so I do
00:06:14 --> 00:06:16 like to make sure that first line is important.
00:06:16 --> 00:06:18 It's been instructed to like never start within
00:06:18 --> 00:06:22 this episode, for example. But they could be
00:06:22 --> 00:06:24 better. They are good enough. They are at least
00:06:24 --> 00:06:26 good enough for me to fix up the next morning.
00:06:27 --> 00:06:31 So I have the process down. I batch the episodes.
00:06:32 --> 00:06:35 I know where everything needs to go. It has strict
00:06:35 --> 00:06:38 instructions for writing and link gathering.
00:06:38 --> 00:06:41 And the last bit is that RSS .com has an amazing
00:06:41 --> 00:06:45 API and I was able to build this skill using
00:06:45 --> 00:06:50 Claude and Claude can talk to the API and everything
00:06:50 --> 00:06:52 works. And the first time it worked, it was amazing.
00:06:52 --> 00:06:56 the first time it worked with a video it was
00:06:56 --> 00:06:58 amazing because I got nervous like hey is is
00:06:58 --> 00:07:01 you know videos could be big am I gonna hit errors
00:07:01 --> 00:07:05 and They don't and so it just makes Publishing
00:07:05 --> 00:07:10 this podcast so much easier for me now. I don't
00:07:10 --> 00:07:15 have this skill publicly available But I do often
00:07:15 --> 00:07:17 talk about things like this and share things
00:07:17 --> 00:07:20 like this on my mailing list. And so if you head
00:07:20 --> 00:07:24 over to streamlined .fm slash SOP, you'll get
00:07:24 --> 00:07:28 my full podcast production SOP. And I will be
00:07:28 --> 00:07:32 sharing more about this skill in the coming weeks.
00:07:32 --> 00:07:34 But that's it for this episode of The Streamlined
00:07:34 --> 00:07:37 Solopreneur. Again, to get my SOP, head over
00:07:37 --> 00:07:40 to streamlined .fm slash SOP. And until next
00:07:40 --> 00:07:44 time, I hope you find some space in your week.