Morning standup brief generator

Morning Standup Brief Generator

This skill compiles local notes, task files, and project documents into a structured daily standup brief in the format: Yesterday / Today / Blockers / Questions. It works entirely from local files — no MCP connectors, external APIs, or technical setup required.

Input:

• Path to a working directory (or Cowork session folder) containing .md and/or .txt files

Output:

• Standup brief displayed in chat
• File standup-brief-YYYY-MM-DD.md saved to the working directory

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Language Detection

Detect the user's language from their message:

• If Russian (or contains Cyrillic): respond in Russian
• If English (or other Latin-script language): respond in English
• If ambiguous: respond in the language of the trigger phrase used

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Instructions

Step 1: Validate Input

1. Check if the user has provided a working directory path.

   • If no path is provided and no Cowork session folder is active: stop and report: "Please provide the path to your working folder. Example: /Users/yourname/work-notes/"
   • If path is provided but does not exist: report "Folder not found: [path]. Please check the path and try again."

2. Check for readable files (.md and .txt) in the directory.

   • If the folder exists but contains no .md or .txt files: report "No readable files found (.md, .txt). Add notes or task files to the folder and try again."

3. Check if a standup-brief-YYYY-MM-DD.md file for today's date already exists.

   • If it exists: ask "A standup brief for today already exists. Overwrite it?"
   • If user confirms: proceed. If user declines: stop cleanly.

Step 2: Discover and Filter Files

1. List all .md and .txt files in the directory (non-recursive; top level only).
2. Apply time filter: prioritize files modified in the last 48 hours.
   • If no files modified in last 48 hours: include all files and note "No recent changes found — using all files in folder."
   • If more than 20 files match: limit to those modified in the last 48 hours and notify: "Found [N] files — filtered to [M] recently modified (last 48h)."
3. Build a list of files to process. For each file, note its name and modification date.

Step 3: Extract Task Signals

Read each selected file and extract the following:

1. Completed items (for Yesterday section):

   • Lines containing - [x], [x], ✓, DONE, COMPLETED
   • Include the item text (trim markers)

2. Open tasks (for Today section):

   • Lines containing - [ ], [ ], TODO, #task, #todo
   • Order by earliest deadline if dates are present (e.g., (due YYYY-MM-DD), by [date])

3. Blockers (for Blockers section):

   • Lines containing BLOCKER, BLOCKED, #blocked, waiting on, waiting for, depends on, stuck
   • Also: open tasks with no progress markers that appear in multiple files or are repeated

4. Questions / Awaiting response (for Questions section):

   • Lines containing ?, ASK, #question, waiting for [name], @[name], ожидаю, вопрос:

Edge Cases:

• If a file contains no structured task markers: extract bullet points and short sentences as candidate items; mark section as (extracted from notes — no formal task markers found).
• If a file contains mixed languages (EN + RU): process all markers in both languages; output in the dominant language of the file content.

Step 4: Prioritize and Deduplicate

1. Remove duplicate items (same text appearing in multiple files — keep once).
2. Sort Today items:
   • Items with explicit deadlines first (nearest deadline at top)
   • Then remaining open tasks in order of file appearance
3. Limit sections to reasonable length:
   • Yesterday: max 7 items
   • Today: max 7 items
   • Blockers: list all (no cap)
   • Questions: list all (no cap)
4. If a section has no items: write — none under that section header.

Step 5: Compose and Output Brief

1. Build the standup brief using the Output Format template below.
2. Insert today's date (YYYY-MM-DD) in the title.
3. Add a footer line listing all source files processed.
4. Display the full brief in chat.
5. Save as standup-brief-YYYY-MM-DD.md in the working directory.
   • Confirm save with: "Brief saved to: [path]/standup-brief-YYYY-MM-DD.md"

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Output Format

# Standup Brief — YYYY-MM-DD

## Yesterday (Done)
- [completed item 1]
- [completed item 2]

## Today (Plan)
- [open task 1]
- [open task 2]

## Blockers
- [blocker 1]
— none (if no blockers found)

## Questions / Awaiting Response
- [question or pending action 1]
— none (if nothing pending)

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*Generated: YYYY-MM-DD | Sources: [file1.md, file2.md, ...]*

Field rules:

• Each item is one line, starting with -
• No sub-bullets (keep scannable for standup format)
• Completed items: state what was finished, not the task description alone
• Today items: actionable verb + object (e.g., "Review PR #42", "Send status update to Alex")
• Blockers: name the blocker and who/what is blocking
• Questions: include the recipient if known (e.g., "Awaiting answer from @Maria on API spec")

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Negative Cases

• No path provided + no active Cowork folder: Stop. Report: "Please provide the path to your working folder."
• Folder not found at path: Stop. Report: "Folder not found: [path]. Check the path and retry."
• Folder is empty (no .md/.txt): Stop. Report: "No readable files (.md, .txt) found in [path]. Add notes or task files first."
• All files are binary or unreadable: Skip unreadable files silently; if all files are unreadable, report: "Could not read any files in [path]. Files may be in unsupported formats."
• Today's brief already exists (user declines overwrite): Stop cleanly. Report: "Keeping existing brief at [path]/standup-brief-YYYY-MM-DD.md."