Make Things: Writing and Documents
This content was developed with AI assistance and is regularly reviewed for accuracy.
Snapshot: October 2026. Model names, prices, and product features change monthly; What's New in AI is the maintained chronology.
Writing is still the most common thing people ask an assistant to do, and it is where the habits from this track pay off fastest. What changed in 2026 is the size of the job you can hand over. You are no longer limited to "improve this paragraph"; an agent inside your document suite can read a folder of notes and produce the report, the deck, and the follow-up email. This page shows how to apply the brief, context, and check habits to everyday writing, then to whole documents.
Learning focus
- Draft, edit, and summarize with briefs that produce usable text on the first or second pass
- Keep your own voice instead of getting generic AI prose
- Build whole documents from source files with the agents in Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, and Claude
- Use voice input and translation without losing accuracy
Drafting: brief the piece, not the paragraph
The weakest writing request is "write a blog post about [topic]." It produces fluent, forgettable text because the assistant has to guess the audience, the point, and the shape. Apply the six-field brief from the Brief lesson instead, even in short form:
Objective: A 600-word post that convinces [audience] to try [one specific action], because [why it matters to them].
Context: I am [role]. Readers know [what they already know] and are skeptical about [objection].
Resources: Use my attached notes as the only source of facts. Match the voice of the two attached posts.
Constraints: Plain language, no listicle format, one concrete example per section, no claims I have not supplied.
Output: Headline options (3), then the draft with subheadings.
Verification: List every factual claim with the line of my notes it came from.
For longer pieces, ask for an outline first and approve it before the draft. It costs one turn and saves rewriting a whole piece that went the wrong direction. The same applies to emails that matter: a decline, a difficult update, a request to a senior stakeholder. State the relationship you want to preserve and the one thing the reader must do, and the assistant handles tone far better than "make it professional."
Editing: ask for changes you can see
When you edit with AI, the risk is accepting a rewrite you did not read closely. Ask for edits in a form you can review:
Edit the attached draft for clarity and concision. Do not change the argument or any figures. Return a numbered list of proposed changes, each with the original sentence, the revision, and a one-line reason. Then give the full revised version.
This turns editing into a review of specific choices rather than a comparison of two blocks of text. It also catches the most common editing failure: a "clarity" pass that quietly softens a claim, drops a caveat, or changes a number. Grammar tools such as Grammarly (now part of the Superhuman suite) still have a place for inline fixes as you type; the assistant is better for structural edits and audience shifts.
Summarizing: say who it is for
A summary is only good relative to a reader. "Summarize this" gets the assistant's idea of what matters; "summarize this report for a finance lead who needs to approve or reject the budget line on page 12" gets yours. Three additions make summaries trustworthy:
- Name what must survive. Decisions, deadlines, owners, numbers, and dissenting views are the things summaries lose.
- Ask for quotes. "Quote the passage behind each point" lets you verify in seconds, and it is the fastest defense against the long-document recall errors described in Check.
- Attach the original. With million-token context, the whole document fits; summarizing your own paste of excerpts throws away the context that makes the summary accurate.
For research reading and study, Google's NotebookLM remains the reference tool for source-grounded summaries, audio and video overviews, and quizzes built only from the documents you upload.
Keeping your voice
Generic AI prose has recognizable tells: balanced triplets, inflated openers, and a tidy summary at the end of every section. The fix is context, not a cleverer instruction. Attach two or three pieces you wrote and liked, and say "match this voice." Better still, put those samples and a short style description in a project, so every draft in that project starts from your voice. Once a style works, the playbook Build Your Brief and Skill Library shows how to save it as a reusable skill.
Then edit like an author. Cut the sentences you would not have written, add the example only you know, and read it aloud once. A draft that is 70% the assistant's and 30% yours, with the 30% in the places that matter, is the realistic goal.
Whole documents with agents
The biggest 2026 change is that the document suites now contain agents that work across files, not just a chat box beside one document.
| Where you work | What the agent can do | Notes (October 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 | Copilot drafts in Word, builds slides in PowerPoint, and works across your mail and files | Microsoft relaunched Copilot as a redesigned app in September 2026 (reported); Microsoft 365 Copilot is a paid business add-on |
| Google Workspace | Gemini works inside Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Gmail; the new Gemini agent for work spans the whole suite | The cross-suite agent was announced in October 2026 in private preview for enterprise customers (reported) |
| Claude | Creates documents, slides, and spreadsheets as files; its agent works across a folder you grant | Claude Docs, Slides, and Design left beta on October 8, 2026, and are included on the free tier |
The workflow is the same in each. Point the agent at the sources (a folder, a thread, a set of files), give it a brief with the output format, and ask it to show you the result before anything is shared or sent. For example: "From the meeting notes in this folder, produce a two-page project status document in our template, a five-slide summary for Friday's review, and a draft email to the sponsor. Save all three as drafts and list any decisions the notes leave unclear." Check the artifacts themselves, not the agent's report, as Check describes.
Two cautions. Keep these agents on the approve before sending setting until the same task has gone right several times. And apply the traffic-light rule from Protect to the folders you grant; an agent that can read the whole drive can quote anything in it.
Voice input and translation
Talking is often faster than typing a brief. Every major assistant has a voice mode, including Claude's free tier, and dictating a messy two-minute explanation of what you need, then asking the assistant to turn it into a brief and confirm it, is an underrated way to start a writing task.
Translation is now routine, and earbud-based live conversation translation reached consumers in late 2025 (not available in the EU at launch). For written translation, give the assistant the audience and register ("formal business Japanese for a first contact") rather than just the target language, and ask it to flag idioms or terms with no clean equivalent. For anything published, contractual, or medical, have a fluent human review it. A useful self-check is a back-translation: ask a fresh conversation to translate the result back and compare the meaning, not the wording.
Key takeaways
- Brief the piece, including audience, sources, and a verification line; approve an outline before long drafts
- Ask for edits as a reviewable list so nothing changes without you seeing it
- Summaries need a named reader, a list of what must survive, and quotes you can check
- Attach samples of your own writing to keep your voice, and save the style in a project or skill
- Agents in Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Claude can build whole documents from your files; keep them on approve-before-sending
Next steps
Continue to: Make Things: Images, Video, and Audio in 2026
- Walk through a full email and document workflow in the playbook Draft Better Emails and Documents with AI
- Grab ready-to-adapt writing briefs from the Brief and Prompt Library