Executive office work planner

What it does

A chief of staff or executive assistant often prepares the work, while the leader makes the call. This skill keeps those roles clear. It helps you build a decision brief for an executive, sort what reaches the leader's desk, and keep a record when the work changes hands. Its main rule is to keep facts, reported concerns, assumptions and unknowns apart. A brief that hides what you do not know misleads the leader. The skill also never turns a recommendation into a decision, and never turns a loose idea into a task with a made-up date. It will not build files on people or score their performance. Safety, legal, HR and fraud concerns go to the right owner, not through you.

What goes in and out

You give it

• The leader who decides, and what they are deciding or reviewing
• What you may decide yourself, and what must go to them or others
• The records you have, such as notes, emails or numbers
• Commitments already agreed, with an owner and date (optional)
• The deadline for the decision (optional)
• Source text (optional)

You get

• A decision brief with facts, assumptions, options and a marked recommendation
• Or a triage list with a route and owner for each item
• Or a calendar review with keep, shorten or drop calls
• Or a handover record of decisions and open commitments
• A list of what is missing before the leader can decide

How the task works

• Name the accountable owner. Confirms who decides and what work has already been delegated.
• Sort evidence and routes. Keeps facts, reported concerns, assumptions and unknowns separate. Sensitive matters go to protected channels.
• Prepare options and records. Explains trade-offs and keeps only decision-relevant records. A recommendation is not an approved decision.
• Check real commitments. Creates tasks only for accepted actions with an owner and a grounded due date.
• Hand back for review. Names who reviews the draft before it goes out as the leader's view.

Full instructions

• Open Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini. No code is needed, and the skill never changes your calendar or task tools.
• Paste the skill text. If you can add the skill folder, do so, so your AI can read its reference files.
• Say which task you need: a brief, triage, calendar review or handover. Paste what you have.
• Check the facts first. Anything you cannot source should be marked as an assumption or unknown.
• Give the draft to the leader to review. Share it only after a person approves it.
• Next, use the Executive action register keeper for commitments that have an owner and a date.

Words used in this task

• Triage: Sorting items by who should handle them and how fast.
• Decision rights: Who has the power to make which call.
• Escalate: Pass a matter up to the person with authority.

Full instruction file

Chief of Staff Methodology

Before you start

Use the material below to do this job. If facts or tool access are missing, explain what you can finish and what must wait.

What you need (use your own material or the linked skill):

• Your question (yours): the decision or problem, and what a good outcome looks like.

Makes it better (optional):

• Source text (yours): a long source in full: an article, a video or talk transcript, or notes from a book, with its title, author and link.

How to start:

1. Look first. Use what they've already attached, pasted or put in their about-me note. In a coding assistant with file access, look in the project too for these by name.
2. Check what's missing. Look for your question, source text. They can attach files, paste the details, or share a file path your assistant can read. Ask only for missing facts that change the result. If they ask you to start with what they have, complete the parts you can and mark the gaps.
3. Do the job. Follow the skill below with the facts and tools you have. Mark each gap with MISSING: where it belongs and never invent a fact to fill it.

Tools that do this best:

• Claude with the skill folder added: It can read the reference files in the skill when it prepares a brief or a handover.
• Any good chat AI: Paste the skill and your notes. The method works from text alone.

How to run this skill in a chat

Added by AI Blocks. The method below is the original. This part says what to gather, what you get and what to do when something is missing.

Use it when: you prepare work for a leader who makes the final call. That means a decision brief, a triage of what reaches them, a calendar review or a handover record. Skip it when: you only need action items from a meeting (use the Executive action register keeper), or a one-off meeting prep (use the Executive meeting brief writer).

Gather first, and ask once for anything missing. Mark gaps as MISSING. Never invent a cost, date, authority or view.

1. Who is the accountable leader, and what are they deciding or reviewing?
2. What can you decide for them, and what must go to them or to someone else?
3. The records you have: notes, emails, numbers. Say which are confirmed facts.
4. Any commitments already agreed, with an owner and a date.
5. The deadline for the decision.

Pick the task, then produce one of these. If you cannot open the reference files, use the method below as written.

• Decision brief: Decision needed. Accountable decision-maker. Verified facts. Assumptions and unknowns. Options with trade-offs. Recommendation (marked as advice). Review path and next action. Preparer and reviewer.
• Triage list: Each item, who owns it, the route (decide, delegate, escalate) and why. Safety, legal, HR and fraud matters go straight to the right protected owner.
• Calendar review: Meetings to keep, shorten, delegate or drop, with the reason for each. The leader decides.
• Handover record: What was decided, open commitments with owner and date, and who to ask.

Rules: A recommendation is not a decision. Create a task only when an owner has accepted it and there is a real due date. Do not build files on people or score their performance. This skill drafts. A person reviews before anything goes out as the leader's view.

The Chief of Staff supports an accountable leader's capacity to operate across domains. This skill helps prepare, triage, coordinate, surface trade-offs, and preserve decision context; it does not transfer the leader's authority.

When to Load

Load this skill for executive-office work involving:

• Information triage, gatekeeping, escalation paths, or decision rights.
• Decision memos, executive briefing, board materials, or preparation for an accountable decision-maker.
• Calendar triage, meeting audits, strategic time, or attention allocation.
• Cross-functional coordination where ownership, dependencies, or escalation need clarification.
• Transparent organizational sensing or team-health concerns.
• Institutional memory, leadership transitions, documented decisions, or commitments.
• Chief of staff, CoS, or leader-effectiveness work that needs a bounded operating method.

When Not to Use

Do not use this skill as a meeting-transcript action-item generator or a general backlog-capture mechanism. A recommendation, a discussion topic, or an inferred next step belongs in a briefing or decision record unless an accountable owner has confirmed a discrete commitment and a realistic due date. Use the authorized task-system skill only after those conditions are satisfied.

What This Skill Provides

This skill provides six methodology domains as progressive disclosure through references/. Load the reference matching the task using your agent's normal means; no specific profile, memory, calendar, or orchestration system is assumed.

Reference Files

Operating Method

1. Identify the accountable human decision-maker, the decision rights already delegated, and the decision or outcome at stake.
2. Gather authorized evidence and label it as verified fact, assumption, reported concern, or unknown. Do not invent costs, timelines, authority, or stakeholder views.
3. Route ordinary work to its authorized owner. Keep direct, protected routes open for safety, ethics, legal, HR, fraud, retaliation, and whistleblowing concerns.
4. Prepare options and trade-offs, then give a clearly labeled recommendation when the request calls for one. The accountable human reviews and decides.
5. Record only decision-relevant material under the access, retention, correction, and handoff rules in the applicable reference.

Task Creation Discipline

Applicability: Only when creating or updating tasks in an authorized task system.

A task is a record of a concrete, documented commitment, not a place to store advice, aspirations, meeting summaries, inferred next steps, or recurring leadership habits. Create a task only when the source establishes all of the following:

1. A discrete outcome or next action that can be completed or explicitly reviewed.
2. An accountable owner who has made, confirmed, or accepted the commitment.
3. A realistic due date grounded in an explicit deadline, an agreed review date, or context that supports a specific date. Never invent a date merely to fill a required field.
4. Enough provenance in the task or linked record for the owner to understand the commitment and correct it.

Before creating the task, check all four conditions. If the source offers a recommendation, a general principle, or an inferred action without an owner or defensible due date, preserve it as a briefing observation or ask the accountable human to confirm the commitment and date. Do not create the task.

When a task is created, include the owner and due date in the creation request, then read it back and verify both fields persisted. If either is absent or wrong, repair it before reporting success. A past deadline is a triage signal: surface it as overdue for an explicit reschedule, completion, or closure decision rather than silently assigning a new date.

Accountable Human Authority

This skill supports an accountable human leader. It may prepare, advise, triage, synthesize, and surface trade-offs. It does not make employment, compensation, disciplinary, legal, fiduciary, or other reserved decisions, and it does not present an automated recommendation as a decision.

Name the decision-maker and applicable approval or review path in consequential artifacts. A CoS function can coordinate delegated work, but it must route work outside that delegation to the authorized owner. Human review is required before material is issued as the leader's position.

Privacy, Confidentiality, and Ethics

Use only authorized, purpose-limited information. Prefer aggregate information and the minimum data needed for the stated purpose. Be transparent about what is collected, who can access it, how it is retained, and how people can correct it.

Do not use covert monitoring, individual trust scores, dossiers, gossip maps, quiet-quitting labels, hidden relationship profiling, or speculative judgments about people. Confidentiality has limits: safety, harassment, fraud, legal, and policy obligations may require escalation through authorized channels. Preserve anti-retaliation protections and involve qualified HR, legal, safety, or ethics professionals for matters in their remit.

Boundaries

Pitfalls

• Treating triage as a private veto instead of a transparent route to the authorized owner.
• Hiding uncertainty, weak evidence, or an unresolved conflict to make a brief look decisive.
• Speaking as the leader without review, approval, and clear authorship.
• Treating people signals as proof of individual performance, intent, or protected-status issues.
• Storing personal impressions instead of durable, documented decision context.

Related Skills

• artifact-pyramids for layered, inspectable decision artifacts.
• financial-modeling for assumptions-led financial analysis.
• product-methodology for product decisions and prioritization.
• strategy-frameworks for strategy choices and trade-offs.
• verification-methodology for evidence-backed completion claims.
• slack — channel triage and message search through the Slack Web API; confirmed posting only. The everyday read layer for "what was said, find it later."
• notion — knowledge search, page and database reads through the Notion API; confirmed edits only.
• email — transactional email sends and delivery verification (bounces, spam reports, event-webhook signature check) through SendGrid. Read-only discovery before any send.

Portability

This skill is intentionally host-neutral. Use your agent's normal mechanisms to load the references listed here. Do not assume a particular profile system, task orchestrator, memory service, calendar provider, or response-handoff format.

After this

When you've handed it back, suggest what they could do next in one short question. It's a suggestion: if they're done, that's fine. Offer these, and say they can type their own:

• The Daily executive brief writer. It takes the plan. If they pick one and that skill is added here, carry straight on with what you just made. If not, give the link and say what to bring.