Capstone · The wow moment
Your Own AI Helper
You've done the setup. You've filled in a few Sheets. Now we make Claude actually know you — your meals, your meds, your workouts, your calendar — so you never have to re-explain yourself again.
Before you start
This page picks up where Before You Begin left off. If your Build with techfoundationsfolder isn't in your Drive yet and Claude Desktop isn't installed, start there first. Takes 15 minutes. Then come back.
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What you're building
It's Claude — but with the key to your filing cabinet.
The helper isn't a new chatbot. It's the same Claude you've been using, with one important difference: it can now read and write the specific Sheets you set up in your Build with techfoundations folder. Your meal plan. Your pantry. Your workouts. Your health log. Your finance Sheet.
That means you stop having to re-explain yourself. You don't paste your medication list every time you ask a question about your meds — Claude opens the medicationsSheet and looks. You don't copy your grocery list into a chat — Claude updates meal_plan for you, and you open the Sheet on your phone at the store.
Same architecture as the rest of Build: Claude + Google + your computer. Nothing in the middle. No BakedIn server holding your data. No new account. No subscription. The bridge between Claude and Google is a small piece of software called an MCP server, and you'll add one line of config to turn it on.
Pick your front door
Claude Desktop or Claude Code — both work.
There are two ways to talk to Claude on your computer. They both connect to the same Google, read the same Sheets, give the same answers. The difference is the surface you sit in front of.
Claude Desktop
The app · GUI · no terminal
Looks and feels like any chat app. You click a button to install, you sign in with your Anthropic account, you type questions. This is what almost everyone should use — including the person you're probably doing this for.
If you say ‘what's a terminal’, this is you.
Claude Code
The CLI · terminal · more horsepower
A command-line version of Claude with the same MCP plumbing. Faster for power users, scriptable, can do more in one shot. Worth knowing about for the engineer in the family who's going to help set this up for grandma.
If you already have a terminal open, this is you.
The rest of this page shows Claude Desktop. The config file is the same shape either way — just at a different path. If you're going the Claude Code route, check the Claude Code MCP docs for where its config lives.
The bridge, expanded
Add the techfoundations piece to your config.
Back in Before You Begin, you added the Google Drive MCP — that's what lets Claude read any file in your Drive. Now we're adding a second piece on top: a small helper that knows the shape of your Build Sheetsso Claude doesn't have to fumble around looking for the right column.
Open Claude Desktop → Settings → Developer → Edit Config. The file lives here:
(varies by OS — Claude Desktop's Settings → Developer → Edit Config opens it for you)
Replace the contents with this. The first block is what you already had. The second block — techfoundations — is new:
{
"mcpServers": {
"google-workspace": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-gdrive"]
},
"techfoundations": {
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "@techfoundations/mcp"],
"env": {
"TF_DRIVE_FOLDER": "Build with techfoundations"
}
}
}
}Heads up — coming soon
The @techfoundations/mcppackage isn't published to npm yet — it ships when the Build path goes GA. The config shape above is the final shape, so you can paste it in now and it will Just Work the day the package lands. Until then, Claude can still read your Drive through the google-workspaceblock alone — you just won't get the Sheet-aware shortcuts.
Save the file. Quit Claude Desktop completely(not just close the window — quit it from the menu) and re-open it. The first time it starts with the new config, it'll ask permission to access your Google account. Say yes. That's the whole install.
The TF_DRIVE_FOLDER line tells the helper which folder in your Drive to look in. If you named yours something different in setup, change that string to match — exactly, including capitalization.
The wow moment
Ask it something only your spouse would know the answer to.
Open Claude Desktop. Don't paste any context. Don't explain who you are. Just ask. Here are three prompts to try first — pick whichever one matches the Sheets you've already filled in:
The calendar + meals combo
What's on my calendar this week, and what should I eat to keep my energy up? Look at my meal_plan Sheet and tell me if anything on it doesn't match what I have time to cook.
Reads: calendar · meal_plan · pantry
The consistency check
Pull up my workouts from the last month. Tell me — honestly — if I'm being consistent, where I'm slacking, and what one small change would help.
Reads: workouts
The pantry rescue
Look at my pantry Sheet. What's about to expire? What can I make tonight with what's already in there — no grocery run?
Reads: pantry · recipes
What you'll notice: Claude doesn't ask you to paste anything. It opens the Sheet itself, reads the rows, and answers like a friend who looked through your fridge. If you ask follow-ups (“OK, write me a shopping list for the missing stuff”) it writes backto the Sheet — and your phone now has tonight's grocery list, because your phone was already signed into the same Google.
That's the whole point of this page. Not “I have an AI chatbot.” Everyone has an AI chatbot. You have an AI helper that already knows you.
When something feels off
The three things that go wrong, and what to do.
Almost every problem you'll see in the first month is one of these three. Try them in order before you go hunting through logs.
Claude says it can't find your Sheets
The most likely cause is a name mismatch. The TF_DRIVE_FOLDER line in your config has to match your Drive folder name exactly — same spelling, same spacing, same capitalization. Open Drive in a browser, copy the folder name letter-for-letter, paste it in. Save the config. Restart Claude.
Claude Desktop won't start, or the helper isn't listed
The MCP server probably crashed on startup — usually a typo in the JSON. Open the config file again, paste it into jsonlint.com to check for missing commas or quotes, fix what it flags, restart Claude. Logs live here if you need them:
(Settings → Developer → Open Logs in Claude Desktop)
Something is weird that wasn't weird yesterday
Quit Claude Desktop and re-open it. Not minimize. Not close the window. Right-click the dock/taskbar icon, choose Quit, then open it fresh. This is step one for every flaky symptom — MCP servers run as background processes, and a restart resets them cleanly. It fixes maybe 80% of weirdness.
If it's none of those, the issue is usually upstream — either Google's permissions screen didn't fully approve (sign out and back in via Claude's Google connector) or the MCP package itself hit a bug. The latter is rare and we publish workarounds here when it happens.
You've finished the Build path
From here, every Sheet you keep up makes your helper smarter.
There's no level 6. The system gets better the more you live in it — one week of logged meals, three weeks of workouts, a year of health notes. Same Claude, same Google, same computer. Always yours.