Posting daily Substack Notes is one of the best ways to grow on Substack, and I actually enjoy writing Notes quite a lot once I get going.
But every time I sat down to write one, I’d just stare at a blank doc, overthink it, and end up not posting anything at all.
So this week I built 3 different Grok Bot workflows to help me with:
Research & ideation
Drafting
Posting
And in this post, I am going to walk you through all 3.
Let’s dig in, shall we?
Workflow 1: Daily writing prompt
Every morning at 5:45 AM, Quill (my Head of Short-Form) pings me with a short writing prompt designed to get me to share an insight, framework, or piece of advice.
Most days it’s about email marketing, newsletters, or copywriting. But on weekends, it leans a bit more personal.
Here’s the question it asked me today, for example:
I usually answer by voice while I’m out on my morning walk.
Then Quill helps me:
Tighten it up
Package it into a punchy Note (keeping my words)
And schedule it (after I’ve edited & approved it).
This is hands down my favorite workflow yet because it feels like I am getting a quick “brain workout” first thing each morning - but with a personal trainer who takes care of all the annoying parts.
Workflow 2: Weekly Substack Note research
This one is handled by Gus (my Chief of Staff).
First, we put together a list of 20+ creators whose Notes consistently do well on Substack. That way, we can easily find proven formats that are working across different niches.
Then every Saturday morning, Gus pulls each creator’s best text-only Note from that week and drops it into a swipe file we built in Notion.
For each one, it breaks down the framework behind it, a fill-in-the-blank template, and an idea for how I could adapt it.
This is extremely helpful for two different reasons:
First, it gives me a sense of what’s working right now and often inspires similar Notes I can write using my own insights and ideas
Second, it gives me and my agents a bunch of proven examples that we can use as templates whenever we are drafting a Note together
Workflow 3: Weekly Substack Note drafting
Once the swipe file is updated every Saturday, Quill takes those fresh formats we just swiped and drafts about 20 Notes using my own topics (email, newsletters, launches, copywriting).
To be clear: We are only borrowing the “structure” behind the post, not the other creator’s wording or ideas.
From there, I pick my favorites and we workshop them one by one - making tweaks, rewriting certain parts in my own voice, and adding real substance from my work/life (eg stats, stories, examples).
This is how you make sure you’re not producing a bunch of AI slop :)
Once they’re approved, Quill schedules one Note per day for the week ahead + logs each of them in my Notion content database so I can see what’s scheduled and what’s live.
And that’s it!
Hopefully this got your wheels turning and gave you some ideas for how to use AI agents to streamline your own content & writing workflows.
Talk soon,
Daniel
That's a great strategy, man.