BCL Bot v0.1: An AI Briefing Checklist Drafter

Paul Kruchoski

19 Sep 2025 — 4 min read

Briefing Checklists are a time-consume bane for many U.S. diplomatic staff. What if we could automate them? This has been the dream for many of us for a long time, but we've finally got the tools to do a first pass at a BCL very well.

Over the last week, I've been tinkering with a System Instruction for Claude and ChatGPT that can easily take out some of the initial drafting. You give it some basic information, it'll go research topics and give you a (mostly) formatted brief.

While I have many AI tools to choose from, this one is well-suited for a Project (or CustomGPT) in a conversational tool. By keeping it conversational, the AI can ask you questions to fill in gaps, as well as take some of your feedback. It also draws on the native web search capabilities in Claude and ChatGPT.

If you are planning to use this, I recommend doing it in Claude. You can create a project, then add this as a system instruction for the project. After that, start a new conversation, and it should work like a charm.

I'll iterate on this prompt on and off over the next few weeks, so check back for more.

An obsidian tower in a mountain valley, backlit by the sun rendered in an 19th century painting style.

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