Hi there!
Welcome to the 27th edition of Work in Beta.
In this edition, we clear up a mess: Projects, GPTs, Gems, Skills, Notebooks. Five names. Two simple jobs. Once you see the two jobs, you always know which one to pick.
Our free AI Starter Kits walk you through setting up AI inside ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, step by step. If today makes you want to build your own, that is the fastest way in. Start here.
So, let’s dive in!
IF YOU ONLY HAVE 2 MINUTES
Image Credits: ChatGPT / Work in Beta
THE ‘HOW TO’ PLAYBOOK
Projects, GPTs, Gems, Skills, Notebooks: Which One Should You Actually Use?
You sit down to write your report. You open your AI. One button says Projects. Another says GPTs. A friend told you Claude has Skills. Google has Gems. And somewhere there are Notebooks.
Five names. You came to write one report. Now you are stuck picking a feature.
So you do what most people do. You open a search tab and type “Projects vs GPTs.” Or “Claude Skills vs Projects.” An hour later you have ten tabs open and still no report.
Here is the problem. You are comparing names. You should be sorting jobs.
Forget the five names for a minute. There are really only two things here. A place to keep your work. And a way to repeat your work. That is it. Every one of those names is one of those two things.
Two Jobs. That Is All.
A Room keeps your stuff in one place. Think of a drawer for one project. You open it and everything is there: your files, your notes, the work you did before. You do not carry it in every time. It just stays. Projects and Notebooks are Rooms.
Quick check: am I keeping a bunch of things together for one project? That is a Room.
(Last week’s Source Room, NotebookLM, was one kind of Room. See When to Use NotebookLM Instead of ChatGPT, if you missed it.)
A Worker does one job your way, again and again. Think of a helper you trained. You taught them how you like the work done. Now every time, they do it the same way. You just hand them the job. Skills, Custom GPTs, and Gems are Workers.
Quick check: am I doing the same kind of task over and over? That is a Worker.
One honest note. The line is not perfect. A Room can hold a few instructions. A Worker can hold a few files. You do not need it to be perfect. This one split clears up most of the confusion anyway.
Find It in Your Tool
You do not need a new app. The tool you already use has both. Here is where to look.
Your tool | The Room (keeps your stuff) | The Worker (does the job) |
|---|---|---|
ChatGPT | Projects | Custom GPTs |
Claude | Projects | Skills |
Gemini | Notebooks | Gems |
Find your row. Those two are yours, already sitting in the app you opened this morning.
Use the Tool You Already Have
This is the part that saves you the most time.
Each tool already has a Room and a Worker built in. So build it where you already are. Do not jump to a new app because a friend likes it, or because the name sounds fancy. Most of the time the tool is fine. You just never set it up.
An empty tool feels weak. A set-up tool feels strong. The gap is almost never the tool. It is the setup.
Switch tools only when yours truly cannot do the job. There are not many of those.
The clearest one: you want answers that come only from your own files, with the exact line shown. That is NotebookLM. It is a Room that reads only what you put in it. (We covered it last week.)
The other reason is not about features at all. Sometimes your workplace decides for you. Many companies allow only one approved tool. Then the choice is made for you, and you use what you are allowed to use.
Room, Worker, or Both?
They are not glued together. Sometimes you want just a Worker. Sometimes just a Room. Sometimes both. The job tells you which.
A Worker on its own. Build a Worker that turns your rough notes into a clean email. You do not give it a Room. You paste the notes, it hands back the email, same style every time. It carries its own instructions and runs on whatever you give it. Plenty of Custom GPTs and Gems live like this, with no Room attached.
A Room on its own. You take on a new client. You drop everything about them into one Room: the brief, the notes, the old emails, the past work. You are not repeating a task yet. You just want the whole client in one place.
Both together. Now the two meet. Keep that client in their Room, and point a weekly-report Worker at it. The Worker writes the report your way, from what is in the Room. Next month a new client walks in. New Room, same Worker. You do not rebuild it. One Worker, many Rooms.
That last pattern is how we run this newsletter. All 26 past editions, our research, and our notes sit in one Room. A voice-guide Worker takes each new draft and makes it sound like us.
So pick what the job needs. A Worker alone for a repeatable task. A Room alone for one growing pile of stuff. Both when the two meet.
The Mistakes We See People Make
Comparing names, not jobs. People ask “Claude Skills or ChatGPT Projects?” That is like asking “a hammer or a garage?” One is a tool. One is a place. Name the job first. Then the choice is easy.
One giant Room for everything. People throw every project into a single Room. The answers turn fuzzy and the Worker gets confused. One project, one Room. Keep them apart.
Training a Worker too early. Do not build a Worker for a job you have done once. Build it after a few rounds, when you know the steps cold. Before that, just use a Room.
Buying a new tool before fixing the one you have. It is rarely a tool problem. It is a setup problem. Set up what you already pay for first.
Final Thought
You do not have five new things to learn. You have two. A Room for your stuff. A Worker for your job.
So try it this week. Pick one job you did three or more times last month. Ask the one question: a place to keep the work, or a way to repeat it? Then build that one thing inside the tool you already use. Do not switch.
The app is not the system. The Room and the Worker are. Build one this week. The next one is easy.
- PD & Sonali