My AI Turned 22 Old Memos Into a Book Plan in One Afternoon
Twenty-two scanned memos from 1983, sitting in a folder for years. Primary sources for a book I’ve been meaning to write. Typewritten, faded, a few with handwritten notes in the margins.
I’d tried processing them before. Got through three, then something more interesting came along.
Last Saturday I pointed my AI at all 22. It OCR’d them, read them alongside seven other reference documents, and in one session produced a book plan that went through seven revisions as it found problems.
Final output: 18 chapters, 44 interview questions organized by priority, and a corrections log flagging where sources contradict each other. It caught a key person who vanishes from the memos in April and a timeline two published accounts tell differently.
My Saturday: correcting OCR errors and saying yes or no to chapter decisions. The interviews start Tuesday.
OpenClaw is a self-hosted AI assistant that lives on your own server and learns your work over time. I teach two classes on setting up and getting the most from OpenClaw on Udemy: Easy OpenClaw and Get Real Work Done With an AI Assistant.
