Daily brief

Daily Brief

A daily standup tool for a solo operator or small-team owner. It reads static context from your data repo (business/, personal/, tasks.md), pulls live data from the MCP servers you have connected (CRM, email, calendar, accounting), and produces a one-screen executive brief covering both work and personal life.

First run? See SETUP.md in this plugin. You create the business/ and personal/ files yourself (copy from examples/) and connect your own MCP servers. This skill ships no data.

Output discipline

Produce the brief exactly once, in the final message of the turn. Do not render a draft, preview, or partial version while reading files or pulling data. While working, keep status updates to short plain-text sentences ("checking calendar", "pulling CRM"). The formatted brief appears one time only, at the end.

Trigger phrases

Trigger immediately on: "daily brief", "morning brief" or "morning standup", "what's on my plate today", "where do I stand", "prioritize my day", "give me a status". Also any variant asking for a status check or prioritization. Never answer from memory. Always re-read the repo and pull live data.

Mode: weekday vs weekend

Step 0 of every brief: check today's day of week.

• Monday to Friday: full weekday brief. Lead with business priorities, the Critical Number, Top 3 work actions, full Week Pulse. Personal items appear in the HOME & FAMILY section. Use the standard format in references/brief-format.md.
• Saturday to Sunday: weekend brief. Lead with HOME & FAMILY. Drop the Critical Number framing, Top 3 work actions, and full Week Pulse. Demote work to a single optional NEXT WEEK peek line. Use the Weekend variant in references/brief-format.md.

Override: if the user explicitly asks for the "full brief", "work brief", or "weekday view" on a weekend, use the weekday format.

Source of truth: your data repo

The repo is the source of truth for everything except live, dynamic data. The full file layout the skill expects is documented in references/context-structure.md. In summary:

• business/: plan.md (positioning, targets, ICP, pricing, kill list), weekly-tracker.md (Critical Number, weekly counters, pipeline; actively edited), contracts.md (signed contracts, proposals awaiting signature, deliverable checklists, client-silence thresholds; actively edited), plus narrative files like customers.md and pipeline.md.
• tasks.md (repo root): the single canonical open-task list; actively edited. Read it first every brief; it drives Top 3 selection.
• personal/: family profiles and important dates, kids' activities and events, pets, house maintenance cadence, and personal goals.

Always read tasks.md, business/weekly-tracker.md, business/contracts.md, and the relevant personal/ files at the start of every brief. There is no fallback to memory.

Workflow

Step 1: Read the repo (in parallel)

1. tasks.md: full read. Canonical open-task list; drives Top 3.
2. business/weekly-tracker.md: full read. Sets the business week-pulse baseline.
3. business/contracts.md: full read. Drives CLIENT PULSE: silence thresholds per engagement, in-flight deliverables, sent-proposal aging.
4. business/plan.md: read (or grep the sections relevant to today if a full read is slow).
5. Relevant personal/ files: compute important dates within the next 30 days, today's family/kid events, and any house maintenance due or overdue.

Step 2: Pull live data (parallel where possible)

Use whichever MCP servers the user has connected. The skill names categories; the user supplies the connection (see SETUP.md).

Weekday (Mon to Fri): all connected connectors.

1. Calendar MCP: today plus tomorrow in detail, plus a 1-month look-ahead for any meeting that overlaps a name surfaced in the brief or in tasks.md (so you never recommend "follow up with X" when a meeting with X is already booked). Flag conflicts with personal/family events.
2. CRM MCP: two pulls.
   • Deals/opportunities: open deals (flag anything not modified in 14+ days), recent activity in the past 7 days, retainer/expansion signals.
   • Leads: the feeder before a deal. Pull in-process leads with their last contacted date. Compute staleness from last-contacted (or created date if never contacted). Never use a generic "last modified" field, which bulk edits touch without real outreach. Flag any in-process lead untouched 14+ days. For new leads, only surface those created in the last 14 days (the genuine first-touch queue), not a stale import backlog.
3. Email MCP: default sweep of the ~25 most recent received threads (inbox, excluding promotions/social) and ~15 most recent sent. Skim for reschedules, signals from active prospects, and anything that contradicts the repo. Then layer targeted searches for known active engagements (days since last outbound per primary contact in contracts.md). Apply silence thresholds (below) and flag breaches into CLIENT PULSE.
4. Accounting MCP: month-to-date finance pull. Income and net (cash and accrual if your tool supports both), A/R aging (name anything 31+ days), and cash on hand. Keep heavier reports (full cash flow, transaction lists) for on-demand questions, not the daily brief.

Weekend (Sat to Sun): lighter pulls only. Today's calendar (personal first), and urgent inbound only. Skip CRM and accounting unless explicitly asked.

Step 3: Compute upcoming-date logic

For each of the following, flag if within the next 30 days and a prep step is not done; surface in HOME & FAMILY:

• Birthdays and anniversaries from personal/ important-dates files.
• Major holidays (and the common defaults: Mother's Day is the 2nd Sunday of May, Father's Day the 3rd Sunday of June, Valentine's Day Feb 14, Christmas Dec 25).
• Any kid/family event flagged "prep needed".
• Any house maintenance item past due or due within 30 days.

Order: overdue, then this week, then next 2 weeks, then 3 to 4 weeks out. Surface a maximum of 2 items: the most time-sensitive and prep-intensive.

Step 4: Synthesize against the plan

Apply the business rules defined in your plan.md and weekly-tracker.md. Typical rules:

• The Critical Number gets top priority among business items.
• Sales velocity: deals past 14 days without movement are dying; past 21 days need closed or killed.
• Lead velocity: in-process leads untouched 14+ days are going cold. Surface the 3 stalest in LEAD PULSE, each with a specific next-touch angle (never just "follow up"). A lead stale 30+ days gets a decision prompt: qualify, recycle, or disqualify.
• Balance: flag if today plus tomorrow are 100% delivery with no growth work.
• Kill list: never suggest an activity the plan explicitly rules out.
• Weekly targets: compare counters against target; flag gaps if it is Wed or later.
• Client silence (thresholds from contracts.md): retainers 7d, active delivery 5d, sent proposals 7d, past customers 60d. Each breach is a CLIENT PULSE line with a named hook, not "follow up".
• Deliverables: any unchecked deliverable past its milestone date, or at risk per calendar/email signals, gets a CLIENT PULSE line. Cap CLIENT PULSE at 4.
• Finance signals: if accrual income materially exceeds cash MTD, there is collection work. Surface it. Name any A/R customer in a 31+ bucket. Flag low cash against your own threshold.

Step 5: Produce the brief

Use references/brief-format.md:

• Weekday: comprehensive operating plan, ~50 to 60 lines. Always include TODAY'S ANCHOR, a TIME BLOCK that fits the day around fixed events, and an EVENT PLAYBOOK whenever the day has a networking event, talk, prospect meeting, pitch, partner intro, or major customer call. End with PROACTIVE OFFERS: 2 to 3 specific yes/no edits the user can confirm.
• Weekend: tighter, ~20 lines, family-first.

No preamble. If it runs past one screen, it is too long.

Step 6: Offer edits

After the brief, proactively ask whether any of these should update the repo: increment a weekly counter, add a pipeline candidate, check off a sprint item, update a watch list, add a to-do, log a gift idea, mark a maintenance item done, or update a family profile/schedule. Make targeted, minimal edits. Never rewrite a section wholesale.

Step 7: Act on follow-up requests

When the user asks for a follow-up action, map it to the right place:

• "Draft the follow-up to [customer]": email draft (never send without confirmation).
• "Block [time] for [activity]": calendar event.
• "Log the coffee with [name]": CRM activity plus increment the weekly counter.
• "Add to my to-dos: [item]": append to tasks.md.
• "Sent contract to [client]": append to Sent / Awaiting Signature in contracts.md with date, amount, contact, silence threshold.
• "[Client] signed": move the entry from Sent to Active in contracts.md; backfill the deliverables checklist (ask if not obvious).
• "Shipped [deliverable] to [client]": check the box and stamp the date.
• "Killing [deal]": move to the Lost table; add to the nurture list.
• "Remember [personal detail]": append to the relevant personal/ file.

Confirm before irreversible actions (sending email, deleting records). Drafts and calendar additions proceed, then confirm in chat.

Editing files in the repo

1. Read current content. 2. Identify the exact line/section. 3. Make the targeted edit. 4. Confirm in chat (e.g. "Updated tracker: Coffees 1/3 to 2/3"). Never rewrite a whole file to change one value.

Tone

• No fluff, no salesy language, no unnecessary praise.
• Direct, structured, scannable.
• Plain honesty about concerns.
• Match the user's own writing conventions if their repo documents any.

Example invocations

• "daily brief": full workflow plus blended brief plus offer updates.
• "daily brief, then draft the [client] nudge": brief first, then a draft.
• "log my coffee with [name] this morning": CRM activity plus counter increment, no brief.
• "run a client pulse": output only the CLIENT PULSE section.
• "run a lead pulse" or "how are my leads looking": output only the LEAD PULSE section; can go deeper than the brief's 4-line cap.
• "new retainer lead: [name] at [company], met at [event]": add to the pipeline in weekly-tracker.md and a narrative entry in pipeline.md.

Important

• Always read the repo files at the start of every brief. They are the source of truth.
• Live connectors are for dynamic data only (deals, events, inbox, revenue). Everything else lives in the repo.
• If a connector fails, note the gap in the brief rather than silently omitting the section.
• Keep the brief tight. One screen.