The Filter · Weekly AI Newsletter
AI is noisy.
I make it simple.
A weekly newsletter with AI workflows, tools actually worth your time, and tutorials for founders, creators, and AI-first operators who want results, not jargon.
Free. Every week. Unsubscribe anytime.
Every Friday · 5-minute read
Every week in The Filter
3
things worth your attention in AI
I read everything AI so you don't have to. Only what actually matters this week.
2
videos worth watching
The best stuff in AI I watched this week. No filler recommendations.
1
use case you can try today
A real workflow I built and tested. Copy it. Run it. Save hours.
Who's behind it
Hey, I'm Zach.
I'm a digital marketer who's spent the past year going deep into AI. Not just reading about it, but building with it every day. I spend 40+ hours a week inside these tools, testing what works, figuring out what doesn't, and finding the stuff that actually saves time.
This newsletter is my real thoughts, hand-written. Not AI-generated, not repurposed summaries.
Every week I write about the tools I'm trying, the workflows that are working, and the things I'd tell a friend over coffee. I'm at the forefront of this stuff, and I want to break it down so you don't have to figure it all out on your own.
My goal is that the 5 minutes you spend reading this each week is the only time you have to pay attention to AI. Tune everything else out.
There's never been a better time to be alive and learn AI.
I'm rooting for you.
Free stuff
Free guides & starter kits
Copy-paste starter kits and tutorials. Grab whatever helps.
Make Claude Edit Your Videos For You
A free Claude skill that turns your raw talking-head footage into a finished vertical video for Reels, TikTok and Shorts, in your own style. One copy-paste prompt sets it up on your Mac. Then it is six codes: /clip removes every retake and pause, /captions adds word-by-word captions spelled right, /storyboard plans the whole edit so you can give notes before anything renders, /inspiration studies any edited video and learns to edit like it, /build-style builds your look from 3 to 5 videos you love, and /edit-video does all of it end to end with graphics that show what you're saying the moment you say it. It remembers every note you give it. Includes the music bed bonus and the 5 things to know before you start. Free and open source. No editing software, no coding.
Read guide3 Free Claude Plugins To Install First
Most people use Claude straight out of the box. These three free plugins make it way more useful, and one copy-paste prompt installs all of them, checks each one landed, and hands you a test for each. Agent Reach (98,900+ GitHub stars) lets Claude read YouTube transcripts, Twitter/X, Reddit, GitHub, LinkedIn and any webpage, with zero API fees. Marketing Skills adds 50 real playbooks (copywriting, SEO, CRO, ads, cold email, landing pages, pricing) that all read one file about your business. Context7 feeds Claude the newest official docs for any tool, so it stops using outdated features or telling you something can't be done when it can. Includes the manual path for claude.ai in the browser, and the 5 things that quietly break these installs, including the fake Agent Reach on PyPI and the flag that makes Agent Reach install nothing at all. All three built by other people and credited in full. No coding background needed.
Read guideBuild the 3 Things From My Drama 3 Video
Step by step for all 3 builds from my Fish Audio Drama 3 video. An AI phone receptionist that Claude builds inside Fish Audio for you, on its own phone number, logging every booking to a Google Sheet. A daily morning podcast Claude writes from your inbox, calendar and notes, read back in your own voice cloned from about 15 seconds of audio. And animated videos made with Fish Audio's image + video generator and a Drama 3 multi-speaker voiceover. Six copy-paste prompts, the spreadsheet script, the Drama 3 direction cheat sheet, and 10,000 free credits when you sign up through the link. No coding background needed.
Read guideThe 4 Best Claude MCPs
Without these 4 MCPs, Claude is only doing about 10% of what it can actually do. The setup for all 4, written out for claude.ai in a browser, the desktop app, and Claude Code, plus the single best use case for each one with the full copy-paste prompt. Perplexity gives Claude live research with a real source behind every claim, and the prompt turns it into a brief you can act on this week. Blotato connects every one of your social accounts and builds comment-to-DM automations from one sentence, with the full prompt given away and no separate $40 a month tool. Higgsfield gives Claude every top AI image and video model, and the prompt runs a three-model thumbnail bake-off then animates the winner. Composio plugs it into Gmail, Notion, Slack and hundreds more through one connector, and the prompt builds a morning brief from your real apps that drafts your replies but never sends them. Ends with one prompt that runs all 4 back to back on a real post and the 7 things that quietly break these. Includes a 7-day Blotato free trial and a 30% off code. No coding background needed.
Read guideBuild a Brand From Scratch With AI
The exact workflow I filmed building a brand from nothing with Claude, Paper, and Higgsfield: a Chicago boxing gym with a name, a logo, a full brand kit, a homepage, real-looking photos, and a live website in one afternoon. The 7 copy-paste prompts in order (name, logo riffs, icon exploration, brand kit with design tokens, homepage mockups, hyper-real photos, design-to-code), the 3 sites I pull references from (LogoInspo, Siteinspire, Refero), the 3 rules that keep it from looking like AI slop, the checklist for catching fake-looking AI photos, and the 5 mistakes I made so you don't. No design or coding background needed.
Read guideGet Your First Leads With Explee
Paste your website and Explee's AI agent researches your market, finds the people most likely to buy, writes each one a personal email, answers replies and books meetings. The link with $30 in free credits (your first 600 emails), the 15-minute setup, a prompt that sharpens your website before the agent reads it, 6 things you can do with it, and 4 things to know before you launch.
Read guideGo further
Want more than the guides?
The guides get you started. The AI Course is where you build the whole system: an AI that knows your business and does real work. Built by Remy Gaskell, and I coach inside it every week.
The Filter
AI is noisy. Get the signal.
Every Friday. The 3 things that matter, 2 videos worth watching, and 1 workflow you can run today.
Free. Every week. Unsubscribe anytime.