Most planning tools ask what you want to get done. The Sage AI week planner asks how much of you there is first, and only then asks what needs doing. That order is the entire difference, and it is the reason a plan from Sage tends to hold on a week that goes wrong.
Sage: Capacity-First Week Planner is a free custom GPT. A custom GPT is a version of ChatGPT that somebody has set up in advance with a job, a personality and a set of instructions, so it opens already knowing what it is for. There is nothing to download and no account beyond the ChatGPT one you probably already have. It sits at epicai.agency/store/sage as one of the free doors in the Ultimate Starter Kit, and the link opens the tool.
Who this is for
People whose capacity moves. Chronic illness, fatigue, pain, ADHD or autism, recovery, caring for someone, a new baby, treatment, grief. Anyone whose Tuesday and their Thursday are not the same person.
If your energy is broadly the same every day, an ordinary planner is fine and cheaper than reading this. Sage is built for the other case, where a seven column grid with identical columns is a small lie you sign every Sunday.
The three questions Sage asks before it plans anything
Click one of the starter prompts and Sage says it needs a quick read on your capacity first. Then it asks three questions, one at a time, each with numbered options.
- How is your body feeling today? Strong, okay but limited, tired and running low, or very depleted with rest first.
- How is your mind today? Clear and focused, a bit scattered, foggy, or overwhelmed.
- What is one word for your emotional state right now? Steady, stretched, frustrated, anxious or flat.
You answer with a single digit rather than a sentence. On a rough day, writing a paragraph about how you are coping is itself a task, and pressing 3 is not.
Sage reads each answer back before it moves on. Answer 2 to the body question and it tells you it has understood some physical energy with limits on it. Answer 2 to the mind question and it says it will keep the plan focused rather than dense. The plan is being shaped while you are still answering.
Then it names your capacity in one sentence, out loud, before it has seen a single task. Partial capacity, say, with a scattered mind and some anxiety, so the week needs focus and protected lighter space.
Copy that order even if you never open Sage. Capacity, then the wall, then the wishes.
What you give it
Two lists, in this order.
What is already in the week. Fixed appointments, the school run, work hours, a hospital call, a client review. Times where you can give them.
What you would like to do if there is room. Sage asks for three things that actually need to happen, not the full list. Three is a limit I would never have set for myself.
Nothing else goes in. No categories, no tags, no project hierarchy to build before you can start.
What comes back: the energy column
Sage returns a table with four columns. Day, Priority, Energy level required, Notes.
The third column is the one no paper planner has. Every task carries the energy it will cost, marked low, medium, medium to high, or rest. You can look at a day and know whether that day can afford what is written on it.
| Day | Priority | Energy level required | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | Main writing task | Medium to high | Best thinking task in the clearest early week slot. |
| Tuesday | Record two short videos | Medium | Hospital call at 10am, so record after. |
| Friday | Light rest day | Low | Kids home from 1pm. |
| Sunday | Full rest slot | Rest |
Rest appears as a row, with a day and a level, the same as any client meeting. It is scheduled rather than left over.
Sage also treats fixed boundaries as boundaries. The school run and the afternoon pick-up stay as hard stops every weekday, not gaps to squeeze more work into. The hour before pick-up is the run up to a stop, which is a different thing from a spare hour.
It finishes by asking whether you want to adjust anything before you go.
What Sage will not do
Indigo articles say the limits out loud.
Sage believes your three digits. Press 1 when the true answer is 3 and it will plan you a strong week, and you will have a strong week's worth of things to feel bad about on Friday. It cannot see you.
It does not predict a flare or an infection or a bad night. It plans the week you named this morning.
It will not make a depleted week hold a strong week's work. Some people find that annoying at first, because most tools let you overfill a day cheerfully and then leave you holding it.
It is a planner and not a manager. No reminders, no nagging, no ticking things off. It draws the shape of the week around the capacity you named. What happens inside that shape is still yours.
And it lives inside ChatGPT, so it has no app, no widget and no calendar sync. You copy the table wherever you keep things.
How to run it for the first time
Open it, and test it on the week you actually have rather than a good one you are hoping for.
Press the digit that is true, including on the mood question, which is the one people round up. Give it what is already in the week before you give it what you want, or it will plan around empty space that does not exist. Leave the rest rows where it puts them. Then read the energy column before the task column, because that is the one telling you whether the week is honest.
Indigo helps solo founders with unpredictable capacity plan a workable week through plain English AI tools that ask about your body before your task list. Unlike standard productivity systems, which assume a steady week and treat a bad one as a discipline failure, this sizes the plan to the energy you reported this morning and puts rest in the table as a scheduled row.
If custom GPTs are new to you, how to use a custom GPT covers the basics of opening and running one. For the thinking behind capacity-first weeks, planning a week around unpredictable energy goes into the method without any tool attached, and executive function and business workflow covers what to do when the plan is fine and starting is the problem.
Questions about setting it up get answered in Indigo AI, the Skool community where AI gets explained as a plain tool.
The plan Sage gives back looks smaller than expected, every time. Run it on your real week and see whether smaller turns out to be about right.