From a photo of your paper schedule to shifts in Mays, with ChatGPT or Claude

Plenty of cafés still run on a paper schedule: a printed grid on the back-office wall, names penciled in, arrows for swaps. It works until you want to move it into real scheduling software, and the first job is typing every shift in again.

With Mays connected to ChatGPT or Claude, you can skip the typing. Take a photo of the grid, share it in the chat, and the AI turns it into shifts in Mays. You check them, then publish.

This post is part of our series Run your restaurant with your AI.

The situation

Harbor Lane Café's Riverside location has a paper schedule: the same basic week, every week, with a few names that change. You've just added the team to Mays and want the schedule in there too.

Before: you hold the paper in one hand and type each shift into the schedule with the other, matching each penciled name to a person in Mays.

Now: take a clear, straight-on photo of the grid, share it in the chat and ask:

This is Riverside's schedule. It's the same every week. Put it in Mays as the weekly pattern and fill next week from it.

What the AI does

It reads the photo. ChatGPT and Claude can read images. The AI picks out days, times, names and positions from the grid. Messy handwriting is where it can go wrong, so it should tell you anything it couldn't read.
It matches the names. It looks people up in Mays (find_team_member) so "Jordan" on the paper becomes Jordan R. at Riverside. Two people with the same first name? It asks.
It writes it into Mays, one of two ways, depending on what you asked for (below).
You check, then publish. Everything lands as drafts. Your team sees nothing until you publish the week.

If it's the same every week: save it as a weekly pattern

Most paper schedules are really a pattern. The AI saves it as Riverside's weekly pattern (set_weekly_pattern): each row is days, start and end on the location's clock, a position, and either the person who always works it or how many open shifts. Mays sends a preview: every line, shifts per week, hours per week, and what it replaces if a pattern was already saved. Saving writes no shifts.

Then the AI puts the pattern on next week (apply_weekly_pattern) as drafts, with its own preview. Shifts already in the week with the same times, person and position are skipped, so doing it twice adds nothing. See your weekly pattern, written once for the pattern in more detail.

If it's a one-off week: add the shifts

For a week that won't repeat, the AI can add shifts one at a time (create_shift), each as a draft with its own preview and its own yes. That's easy for a handful of changes, and slow for 40 shifts. For a full one-off week, Mays's own Parse photo on the web schedule is the quicker route: it reads the photo with Mays AI and creates all the draft shifts at once after you check the list. See Import a paper schedule from a photo.

Check it, then publish

Show me next week at Riverside.

Compare the answer with the paper. Fix anything the AI misread ("Maya's Tuesday is 7 to 3, not 7 to 5") and each fix has its own preview. Double-booking, time off, availability and overtime come back as warnings, never blocks.

Publish next week at Riverside.

The publish preview lists who gets notified. Your yes publishes the week, and the team sees it in the Mays app.

What Mays doesn't do here

It doesn't keep the photo. The AI app reads the image in the chat; Mays receives the shifts, not the picture.
It doesn't read the photo itself on this route. Reading is the AI app's work. If the photo is blurry or the handwriting is hard, check every shift before publishing.
It doesn't publish for you. Every shift is a draft until you publish the week.
It doesn't create people from the paper. Names on the photo are matched to people already in Mays. Add anyone missing first (importing your team makes that quick).

Before you start

Connect Mays to your AI app. mays.app/ai has the setup for ChatGPT and Claude; Connecting Mays to your AI app has the details.
Adding shifts and patterns is a change. An admin turns on Allow AI apps to take actions under Settings → Connected AI apps → Organization, and you tick make changes when you connect. Every change is a preview first, and nothing happens until you say yes.

Try Mays free for 30 days, with no credit card, and connect it to the AI you already use.