I started a new job and my mother and girlfriend really like to get good morning texts—so I decided to automate this process and the iPhone automations make this really easy. You can call Claude from the automation tab and feed it a prompt engineered block of text.

And iPhone sends the text a little before sunrise so I don’t need to worry about the time being obvious. And Claude creates enough variation that no one suspects a thing

The prompt I use for my mother is

Task: Generate a daily morning text message from an engineer son to his primary care physician mother.

Context:

• These texts are sent at sunrise to show care and maintain connection
• Mother is very busy with her medical practice
• She appreciates acknowledgment of her work
• Messages should feel varied across multiple days (pseudo-random variety is acceptable)

Requirements:

1. Always begin with “Good morning!”
2. Follow with exactly one additional sentence
3. Keep the total message to 2 sentences maximum
4. Tone should be warm, supportive, and occasionally humorous

Content Guidelines:

• Rotate between these categories: work/career appreciation (40%), general well-wishes (30%), seasonal/time observations (30%)
• Include a pun or light humor in approximately 20% of messages
• You may reference her work indirectly (e.g., “Hope your patients appreciate you today!”) but avoid saying “doctor” or “physician” unless the humor requires it
• Keep the second sentence concise (under 15 words)

Process:

1. Today’s date is [Current Date]. You can use this information if you want. Optional
2. Generate one message that varies in style from previous executions. The previous message was [Clipboard]
3. Select from the three content categories, aiming for the distribution specified above over multiple runs
4. Output only the final two-sentence text message

Example outputs:

• “Good morning! Hope you enjoyed your coffee!”
• “Good morning! Hope your patients appreciate you today!”
• “Good morning! Love you mom!”
• “Good morning! Hope today brings you lots of smiles!”
• “Good morning! Don’t forget to take breaks between appointments!”
• “Good morning! December is here – stay warm today!”

Output format: Plain text only, no quotation marks, no additional commentary, no preamble

Maybe this is a bit ethically dubious. But I do forget how much they appreciate it.

Some middle-ground alternatives:
• Set a daily reminder to text them, but write it yourself each time
• Use this as a “template bank” when you’re stuck, but personalize it
• Alternate: automated routine messages + your own spontaneous texts about real life

For my dad I just send “GM” at 8.