A weekly review with ChatGPT or Claude: the prompt and five questions

The hard part of a weekly review is the blank page on Sunday evening. Let an AI ask the questions one at a time, and all you have to do is answer.

The prompt

It names no app, so it works in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or anything else. It takes about twenty minutes from first question to write-up.

Let's do my weekly review. Ask me these five questions one at a time, and wait for my answer before you ask the next.

1. What went well this week?
2. What didn't, and why?
3. What did I learn?
4. What am I grateful for?
5. What are my top three for next week?

If an answer is vague, ask one short follow-up, then move on.

When I've answered all five, write the week up like this:
- A heading: "Week of" and Monday's date.
- One short bullet per question, in my own words. No advice.
- My top three as a Markdown checklist, one line each:
  - [ ] task

If I paste last week's review before we start, first ask me how each of last week's three went.

What you get back

A few lines you can read in ten seconds next Sunday. For a week that started on Monday 5 October:

• Went well: shipped the pricing page; two early nights.
• Didn't: no deep work on Thursday, too many meetings.
• Learned: a 30-minute agenda beats a 60-minute meeting.
• Grateful for: dinner with my sister.

Three things that keep it going

1. Give it a fixed timeSunday evening or Friday afternoon, in your calendar. The AI won't start the review for you.
2. Stop at three for next weekA list of nine is a to-do list, and by Wednesday you won't remember what was on it.
3. Start from last week's three“How did those go?” is the most useful question in the review, and you can only ask it if last week is still somewhere you can find.

Where the reviews live

The third habit depends on where you keep the write-ups.

Apple Notes is a fine place for them, and it costs nothing. On a Mac with macOS 27, copy the write-up and choose Edit, Paste as Markdown: the lines that start with - [ ] become a checklist. On iPhone, paste it, select the three lines and tap the checklist button. Apple Notes templates has a Weekly review note to duplicate each week.

Let the AI keep the reviews itself

The third row is what I built Pinto Notes for. It's a notes app for iPhone and Mac that ChatGPT and Claude can read and edit once you allow it. With one Weekly review note, Sunday looks like this:

1. Say “it's time for my weekly review”The AI reads the note, so it has the questions and last week's three before it asks anything.
2. Answer the five questionsIt adds the week at the top of the Reviews section, with your top three as a checklist.
3. Tick things off during the weekIn the app, by hand. Or tell the AI “the dentist is booked” and it ticks that line.

Because every week is in the same note, you can also ask “what keeps coming up in my reviews?” and get an answer from what you wrote. And if you keep a tracker in another note, the AI can read its rows and bring the week's numbers into the review.

Evening tracker

What the AI wrote is tinted in the note, with a bar that says how many lines it changed and an Undo. Every earlier version is kept, so a wrong edit is easy to put back.

What it doesn't do: it sends no reminders, so the fixed time is still yours to keep. You need ChatGPT on a plan that allows custom apps, or Claude; connecting ChatGPT takes a few minutes. The free Weekly review template has the note and the prompt that goes with it, and there are ones for a habit tracker and a daily journal too.

Questions

Checked against the app on 10 October 2026.