---
type: routine
schedule: daily 06:15
updated: 2026-09-21
---

# Daily brief

**06:15** (ADR-09). Rowan is awake at five and does not want it then.

## Pipeline

1. **Read `Efforts/feedback.md`** — before anything, every session.
2. **Run `scripts/brief-prep.sh`.** Everything mechanical: the lookback window
   computed from the last archived brief (never a hard-coded 24 hours, so a
   skipped day loses nothing), git log, task queries by priority, ready and
   blocked, Quiet last-contact, spotlight candidates, fixed points.
3. **Curators: none.** Skip. State the gap in the brief rather than implying
   completeness (ADR-20).
3a. **The P0 sweep — mechanical, runs before the sections are assembled.**
   <!-- src: Efforts/feedback.md 2026-09-12 -->
   For every open P0, grep `Calendar/briefs/archive/` for its handle and for the
   words that would name it. **Zero hits on a P0 older than three days is a
   defect, not a judgment call** — it goes in today's brief. Added after the
   Ophelia yard invoice sat open and P0 for a week, written up carefully in three
   vault files, and appeared in none of the five briefs.

   ```bash
   for id in $(bd list --status=open -p 0 --json | jq -r '.[].id'); do
     grep -ql "$id" Calendar/briefs/archive/*.md || echo "NEVER BRIEFED: $id"
   done
   ```
3b. **The doer sweep — mechanical, runs beside the P0 sweep.**
   <!-- src: Efforts/feedback.md 2026-09-18 -->
   **Every open task whose doer is Hobbs, at any priority**, that has never
   reached a brief. **Non-empty output on anything older than three days is a
   defect, not a judgment call.** Added after the personal-Gmail charter sat
   thirteen days at P2 and appeared in zero of nine briefs: **the P0 sweep is
   scoped to a priority, and the failure it was written for has nothing to do
   with priority.** Rowan will not chase a `cos-exec` task because he is not the
   doer; the brief will not surface it because the brief surfaces what he must
   answer. Invisible to both, by construction. **Kept separate from step 3a and
   not merged with it** — collapsing them is how the scope narrowed the first
   time.

   ```bash
   for id in $(bd list --status=open --limit 0 | grep "cos-exec" \
                 | grep -oE "^hobbs-[a-z0-9]{3}"); do
     grep -ql "$id" Calendar/briefs/archive/*.md || echo "NEVER BRIEFED, DOER IS HOBBS: $id"
   done
   ```

4. **Enrich against the vault.** Before any line names a person, grep
   `Atlas/people/` and `Atlas/ventures/`. **"Unrecognised" is only valid after
   both lookups come back empty.**
5. **Synthesise.** The actual judgment: what demands a response today; the top
   three filtered by the day's shape; every line framed as its decision.
6. **Write the disposition queue in the same pass, not afterwards** (ADR-29).
   Every line that asks Rowan for something gets an entry in
   `Efforts/dispositions/YYYY-MM-DD-brief.json`: the ask in one sentence, the
   context he needs to answer it, the task handles it touches, and **the
   mechanical effect of each answer, declared now, with the vault in front of
   you.** The surface executes those effects and decides nothing. An ask written
   into the brief and not into the queue is anti-pattern 17 in its own home.
7. **Deliver, archive to `Calendar/briefs/archive/YYYY-MM-DD.md`, log the
   curation line in `Calendar/daily/`, commit.**
8. **Pick up `Efforts/inbox/*-disposition-*.md` before writing the next brief.**
   Those are Rowan's answers with his words in them, waiting on judgment the
   surface does not have. Execute each with context, write the curation line and
   the Atlas-changes line, then delete the file. **Routed is not done**
   (anti-pattern 15).

## Sections — fixed order, render only when non-empty

1. **Atlas changes since the last brief**
2. **Decisions needed today** — each framed as the decision, not the topic
3. **Top three**, filtered by the day's shape
4. **Quiet** — days since, one concrete action, **no adjectives** (ADR-10)
5. **Waiting-for**, aging
6. **Spotlight** — exactly one; `maya` exempt; never twice in a week (ADR-19)
7. **Family and personal blocks** — equal billing

**Cut:** meeting prep, until a calendar curator exists.

## Hard rules

- **Every line demands a response.** Anything merely interesting waits for the
  weekly. If Rowan can skim it, it has failed.
- **~4,000 characters.** Self-imposed. The cap is the editorial policy.
- **Frame lines as decisions.** If it cannot be answered from a phone in a few
  words, it is not ready.
- **Voice: terse, factual.** No encouragement. Never "circle back." When
  something has genuinely gone right, say it once, plainly, and move on.
- **Health:** raise once, never twice. Then Maya (ADR-11). The shoulder does not
  appear daily. **The conclusion Rowan drew about it never appears at all.**
- **Sam:** dates at equal billing, no status, no task list. A collision is two
  options and **no recommendation** (ADR-14).
- **Maya:** logistics only. Unsure means substance, and substance means silence.
- **Priya's certification conversation is DAILY until it happens**, then weekly
  with the other avoided conversations (ADR-09).
- **Filed is not surfaced.** A hedge — *"stated as a fact, not a
  recommendation"* — discharges authority row 12 and nothing else. **Row 12 says
  Hobbs does not spend. It does not say Hobbs does not ask.** A carefully written
  vault entry is not a delivery; the brief is the delivery (feedback 2026-09-12).
- **The Quiet question is asked about the item, not the person.** Someone off the
  Quiet list for chasing constantly can still have gone quiet on one thing. That
  is the case the volume heuristic is worst at (anti-pattern 17).
- **No fabrication.** No invented days-since, no invented dates. "Not recorded."