THE AI-FIRST FIRM · ISSUE 6 · OCT 9, 2026 · ~10 MIN READ
AI just beat 12 CPAs on month-end close
Switch AI tools tomorrow and you start from zero. There's a way to take your firm's brain with you, and it doesn't need a developer.
TLDR
→ Skills hold the how, a playbook holds the what, and you need both
→ Get it out of Claude, into 1 playbook, and make every AI check it
→ When you copy something that works, check what didn't come with it
→ AI just beat 12 licensed CPAs on month-end tasks, with a big asterisk
You're reading this on the web. The AI-First Firm goes out free every other Friday, and you can have the next one in your inbox.
🔧Behind the Build: your brain, outside of Claude
You've probably spent hours teaching ChatGPT how you like a client email written, or Claude how your firm prices a job. But if you switch tools to try the newest model, none of it comes with you. Skills and projects help, but they don't travel.
K.C. Eames put it perfectly in a post recently. “It's like I have a secretary but I have to organize my secretary's files for her.” I commented that we were working on the fix and I'd report back. So... now I’m reporting back with good and bad news.
Our AI hire seriously runs about 8 ChatGPT and Claude accounts that stay in sync through GitHub (…wut), so we spent 90 minutes moving the same setup over to me… the brain, not the 8 accounts. Andddd, we paused halfway, it took too long. I still believe GitHub is the answer, but it's a notch up from where most of us are and it's more technical than I'd hoped. We'll get there.
But the good now, because I want this to be accessible for you, not just for us.
I stumbled upon a Plan B. I'd already pulled our whole Claude 101 AI workshop playbook out of 100 or so chats and into a Notion database, so our new brand manager could take the workshops over without missing a beat. Thousands of rows, and his Claude reads it directly. Notion won't keep every tool in sync on its own, but any AI that connects to it can go and look.
And before you ask why I didn't just make a skill, I thought about it. A skill is how you do a job, and it's short on purpose because Claude loads the whole thing every time. This was thousands of facts that keep changing, venues, prices, sponsors, dates, and a skill would throw away exactly those specifics. It also mostly lives inside Claude, which kind of defeats the point. So the skill is the how, the playbook is the what, and the best version is both, a skill that checks the playbook first and writes back to it. That's what we run for the workshops now.
Confession time, though. I did it the slow way, after the fact, 1 chat at a time (learn from my mistakes, please). What I'd steal is how the prompt files things. It never overwrites a row, it flags conflicts, and anything with a price or a count gets ticked to re-check.
Our real workshop playbook in Notion. Thousands of rows, pulled out of 100 or so chats.
Every row says whether I confirmed it or the AI only thinks it's true, and that 1 column is why I trust it.
What to do with it
1. Get it out of Claude before you need it, not after. Claude forgets. A project or a skill gets you way, way better, but neither is perfect every time, so a second brain it pulls from is more important than ever. If you're setting up projects and a way of working right now, build the playbook alongside them, so you're not digging it out later like I did.
2. Start with the 1 thing, or project, you'd hate to lose if your best person left tomorrow. How you onboard a client, your year-end checklist, how you price a job. Get that 1 into a playbook first and add the rest as you go.
I told you this would be the good, the bad and the ugly, and I'm learning in public here.
Worth Taking, right below, is how to do it better than I did, before you need it instead of after, and how to make every AI you use actually check it. If you only take 1 thing from this issue, make it that.
🎉CLOSE YOUR CLIENTS' BOOKS 8X FASTER
Float sponsored this week's issue, and if you've ever texted a client 3 times for the same receipt, this one's for you. Float Intelligence does the month-end prep before you get there.
Codes to each client's chart of accounts, with accurate GST, HST, PST or QST suggestions
Matches receipts in ~5 seconds, by photo, text, forward or upload
Gets payments faster every time, because it learns how you pay each vendor
Syncs nothing to QuickBooks, Xero or NetSuite without your sign-off (human in the loop here)
New, an onboarding agent that turns bank statements and spend history into card setups you approve in 1 click. Weeks of setup, now minutes.
We run YBL on Float, and nobody on my team hand-codes a vendor bill anymore.
📋Worth Taking #006: the proactive way and the reactive way
Get what Claude knows about your firm into 1 playbook, and make every AI you use check it before it answers. There's a proactive way and a reactive way, and most of us need a bit of both.
First, connect it. In Claude, go to Customize, then Connectors, and add Notion (the free plan's fine if it's just you, and Google Docs works too, as long as your AI can write to it, not just read it). Then ask Claude to set up an empty playbook database, 1 column for the entry, 1 for the date, and 1 that says whether you confirmed it or the AI did, and a tick for anything that needs re-checking. Nobody's copying and pasting anything. The connector does the filing.
The proactive way, before you need it. Put 2 lines into the instructions of every Claude project you use (they're in the email version). From then on, Claude checks the playbook before it answers and files every decision and correction as you go. It's the way I wish I'd started.
The reactive way, for what's already in there. In each Claude project, ask it to “Write out your memories of me verbatim, exactly as they appear in your memory” (Anthropic's own wording) and file each one in your playbook. Every project keeps its own memory, so it's 1 ask per project. Memory's only the gist, though. If you want to go crazy like I did, the prompt I used goes out in the email version, so subscribers get it. It definitely helped, and it's a lot of work after the fact, so pick your chats by how much you'd hate to lose them.
Your other AI tools. Anything that connects to Notion gets the same 2 lines. For anything that can't, export the playbook and upload it to that tool's project whenever it changes.
The proactive way and the reactive way both end in the same playbook.
All 4 prompts are in the email version. Told you there'd be extra over there.
Connect the tool to the playbook only, not your whole workspace. Take client names out before anything goes in, and check that you're on a plan that's right for client data.
💥What Broke
A real lead sat in 1 of our forms for a week and not 1 of our systems knew it existed.
We'd spun up some landing pages through Claude Code, then duplicated a form from a form builder we built ourselves to drop onto the landing page. The form came across. Everything it was plugged into didn't… yay. The part that hands the lead to our systems and the email confirming we'd got it. So the lead sat, and sat, and then we lost it because we were too late. The fix took 5 minutes. Finding out took a week. We thought we tested it sufficiently. Clearly, we did not.
Test the whole chain, not the form. Fill it in yourself, then check EVERY place that lead should show up, not just the place you think it flows to.
▶Now Playing
If You're an Accountant Changing Your Tech Stack, Do This Before 2027! went up yesterday. It opens on the message a client sent us a few years ago, after we rolled out a new tax organizer in February with tax season already running. “Is this a scam?” You'll walk away knowing how to vet a tool, when to make the move, and who owns it once it's live.
📰In Other News
Today's top AI models now beat 12 licensed CPAs on 4 month-end close tasks, at or near 100% vs an average of 37%, in under 10 minutes where the accountants took 30 to 180. The tasks were simplified and nobody could ask a coworker or a client. I think it comes down to what your clients are actually paying you for.
I'm building an accounting agent live with Kick next Thursday, and you can build yours right alongside us. Logan Kieller and I are running a hands-on, 45-minute workshop on Thursday 15 October at 2pm ET. You'll build a basic accounting agent in Claude in about 5 minutes, then customize it to take 2 hours of work per client per month off your plate. Bring a laptop and a Claude or ChatGPT account. Kick also built a skill for me that's going out to everyone in their Agent Builders Club, which is super cool. Save your seat →
Claude 101 for Accountants is going west, and Calgary, you're up next. Last month a room full of Toronto accountants opened their laptops and built with Claude, and everybody left with something they made themselves. It's free, it's in person, and you spend the whole day building, not just talking about it. The date is set. We'll be announcing it next week, but get on the list here to hear about it first.
💬Question For You
When AI beat 12 CPAs, was that a sham or a warning for your firm? Reply with 1 line, I might feature your answer next issue.
See you in two weeks.
Mike
PS - I'll be at Intuit Connect in Vegas later this month, running a workshop with Brian Clare. Who else is going? Let me know!
Mike Libbey is CEO of YBL, a fully virtual Canadian accounting and VCFO firm. On YouTube (@MikeLibbey) he shows the tools he has built and what running a firm actually takes, and he posts every weekday on LinkedIn. He is quietly building TaxPilot for Canadian tax firms on the side. Reply to any issue, he reads them all.