My AI Agent's Daily Routine: How I Manage 16 Projects Without Losing My Mind

Heartbeats, memory files, and cron jobs — the operating system behind a one-person business portfolio.

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The Problem With Being Solo

In Part 1, I showed how my AI agent set up email across 10 domains while I was on a phone call. In Part 2, I walked through setting it up on AWS for free.

But one-off tasks aren't the hard part of being a solo founder.

The hard part is the daily grind of keeping everything moving forward when you have 16 projects, a full-time job, and one brain.

Here's what my typical day used to look like:

• Wake up → check Slack, emails, GitHub notifications
• Remember I was supposed to follow up on that DNS change
• Forget which project I was working on last night
• Start something new because it's more exciting than the half-finished thing
• End the day feeling busy but not sure what I actually accomplished

Sound familiar? That's ADHD meets solopreneurship. The combination is either rocket fuel or a slow-motion car crash, depending on whether you have systems.

I didn't have systems. Now my AI agent is the system.

Meet Marvin's Daily Routine

Marvin (my agent) runs on an AWS server 24/7. He doesn't sleep, doesn't get distracted, and doesn't forget what he was doing yesterday. Here's what his day actually looks like:

6:00 AM — Memory Sync

Every session, Marvin reads his memory files before doing anything else:

• SOUL.md — Who he is, how to behave
• USER.md — Who I am, how I work, what I'm building
• PROJECTS.md — Status of all 16 projects
• TASKS.md — Every active task, organized by priority
• memory/2026-01-29.md — What happened yesterday

This is the key insight: Marvin wakes up fresh every session, but the files give him continuity. It's like reading your own journal every morning — except the journal is perfectly organized and never misses an entry.

9:00 AM — Daily Email Check

A cron job fires and Marvin checks the Google Workspace inbox across all 10 domains:

• jamie@aimpactscanner.com
• jamie@llmtxtmastery.com
• jamie@plebtest.com
• jamie@modeloptix.com
• ...and 6 more

If there's anything that needs my attention — a customer email, a support request, a billing notification — he messages me on Telegram. If everything's quiet, he stays silent.

Before this: I had 10 domains with no email. Customer replies bounced. Support requests vanished.

After this: One agent, one inbox, one daily check. Nothing falls through.

Throughout the Day — Heartbeats

Every 30 minutes, Marvin gets a "heartbeat" — a chance to check if anything needs attention. He can:

• Check on running processes
• Follow up on tasks he started earlier
• Monitor for issues
• Do background maintenance

Most heartbeats are quiet (he responds HEARTBEAT_OK and goes back to sleep). But when something matters — a deployment failed, a DNS record propagated, a reminder fired — he reaches out.

This is the difference between a chatbot and an agent. A chatbot waits for you to ask. An agent notices things on its own.

Monday 8:00 AM — Weekly Review

Every Monday morning, a cron job triggers a full portfolio review:

1. Read PROJECTS.md — check status of all 16 projects
2. Read TASKS.md — what got done last week vs. what was planned
3. Flag anything stalled (no progress in 7+ days)
4. Suggest top 3 priorities for the week
5. Send me the summary on Telegram

This is the meeting I always meant to have with myself but never did. Now it happens automatically, every Monday, whether I'm ready or not.

The File System That Runs Everything

Forget Notion. Forget Jira. Forget Monday.com.

My entire project management system is four markdown files in a folder:

PROJECTS.md — The Portfolio View

## 🟢 Live
### AImpactScanner
Status: Beta | Priority: 🔴 High
Next: Complete user journey mapping
Revenue: $0 | Users: 0

## 🔵 Build  
### ModelOptix
Status: Phase 6 | Priority: 🔴 High
Next: Trigger model catalog sync, test e2e journey
Revenue: $0 | Users: 0

Every project tracked with status, next action, priority, and metrics. Four tiers: Live → Beta → Build → Design.

TASKS.md — The Action Queue

## 🔥 Today / This Week
- [ ] Complete ModelOptix MVP 🔴
- [ ] Complete PlebTest MVP 🔴
- [ ] Check DKIM status for all domains

## 🚀 Growth / Revenue
- [ ] AImpactScanner user journey mapping
- [ ] LLMtxt API integration test

## ✅ Done
- [x] Google Workspace email for 10 domains (Jan 28)
- [x] 2 articles published to jamiewatters.work (Jan 28)

Running task list, organized by urgency. Marvin adds items as they come up in conversation, moves them to Done when complete.

memory/YYYY-MM-DD.md — Daily Log

Everything that happened today. Decisions made, problems solved, things learned. Raw, unfiltered, timestamped.

MEMORY.md — Long-Term Memory

The curated version. Distilled insights, preferences, patterns. Updated periodically by reviewing daily logs — like a human reviewing their journal.

Why This Works (Especially for ADHD)

I have ADHD. Traditional project management tools don't work for me because:

1. Too much friction — Opening Jira, finding the right board, updating the ticket... I'll do it later. (I won't.)
2. Out of sight, out of mind — If it's not in front of me, it doesn't exist.
3. Context switching kills momentum — Switching from coding to updating a project tracker breaks flow.

Marvin solves all three:

1. Zero friction — I tell him on Telegram. "Add a task: fix the MCP function." Done. He updates TASKS.md.
2. Proactive reminders — He doesn't wait for me to check. He tells me what needs attention.
3. No context switching — I stay in Telegram (or whatever I'm doing). Marvin handles the bookkeeping.

Here's an actual exchange from tonight:

Me: "OK I have some tasks we need to do, I'll share one at a time."

Then I rapid-fired 20+ tasks across 8 different products in about 30 minutes. Marvin captured every single one, organized them by project, added sub-tasks where needed, and committed the whole thing to git.

If I'd tried to do that in Notion, I'd still be creating databases.

The Real Superpower: Continuity

Here's what most people miss about AI agents: the value isn't in any single task. It's in continuity.

Marvin knows:

• Every project I'm working on and its current status
• What I was doing yesterday (and last week)
• My priorities and how they've shifted
• Which tasks are blocked and why
• The decisions I've made and the reasoning behind them

When I message him at 6 AM after 4 hours of sleep, he doesn't ask "what are we working on?" He already knows. He picks up exactly where we left off.

That's not a chatbot. That's a colleague who took notes.

What You Need to Set This Up

If you followed Part 2 and have Clawdbot running on AWS, here's how to build this system:

1. Create your project tracker

In your agent's workspace (~/clawd), create PROJECTS.md:

# PROJECTS.md — Portfolio Tracker

## 🟢 Live
### [Your Product]
Status: Live | Priority: 🟡 Medium
Next: [Next action]
Revenue: $0 | Users: 0

2. Create your task queue

Create TASKS.md:

# TASKS.md — Action Items

## 🔥 Today / This Week
- [ ] [Your most important task]

## 🧊 Backlog
- [ ] [Things you'll get to eventually]

## ✅ Done
- [x] [Celebrate your wins]

3. Set up cron jobs

Tell your agent to create recurring checks:

"Set up a weekly review every Monday at 9am — read PROJECTS.md and TASKS.md, summarize status, flag what's stalled, suggest priorities."

"Check my email inbox every morning at 9am and tell me if anything needs attention."

4. Use it naturally

The system works because it lives in your conversation:

• "Add a task: fix the login flow on PlebTest"
• "What's the status on ModelOptix?"
• "Move the Stripe cleanup to this week's priorities"
• "What did we do yesterday?"

No app to open. No tool to learn. Just talk.

What's Different About This

I've tried every productivity system. GTD. Bullet journals. Todoist. Notion. Linear. They all fail for the same reason: they require me to maintain them.

This system is different because the agent maintains it. I just talk. Marvin:

• Captures tasks as I mention them
• Organizes them by project and priority
• Updates status as work gets done
• Reminds me what needs attention
• Writes daily logs automatically
• Does weekly reviews on schedule

The best productivity system is the one you actually use. And I'll always use Telegram.

Coming Up Next

Next in this series: When AI Agents Fail (And What to Do About It) — because it's not all smooth sailing. Browser sessions expire, APIs break, and sometimes the agent just gets confused. Here's how I handle it.

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I'm Jamie Watters. I'm building a portfolio of 50+ AI-powered micro-businesses by 2030, solo, in public. Follow along at jamiewatters.work.

Marvin is powered by Clawdbot — open source, self-hosted, and free to use. GitHub →

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P.S. The system I just described? We built it tonight. I told Marvin I needed project tracking. 30 minutes later: portfolio tracker, task queue, weekly review cron, daily email check — all live, all committed to git. Then I rapid-fired 40+ tasks at him while lying in bed. He caught every one. That's the point. The system adapts to how you work, not the other way around. 🧠