{
 "schema": "aiblocks-page/1",
 "id": "narrative-decision-memo-writer",
 "type": "skill",
 "name": "Narrative decision memo writer",
 "summary": "Turn a decision and your evidence into a clear memo with options, costs, risks and a review plan, as a decision narrative, a PR/FAQ or a short brief.",
 "headline": "Narrative decision memo writer",
 "subhead": "Share the decision, the reader, your evidence and your limits. The skill picks a short brief, a full narrative or a future-product question document. You get connected prose that keeps choices, costs, risks and gaps in view. It is adapted from a public MIT-licensed source on Amazon-style writing, not official Amazon templates.",
 "job": {
  "id": "document-work",
  "name": "Write down how work gets done"
 },
 "level": "intermediate",
 "thinking": "high",
 "tested": true,
 "updated": "2026-10-28",
 "first_published": "2026-10-25",
 "inputs": [
  {
   "type": "question",
   "required": true,
   "label": "Question",
   "what": "the problem, decision or piece of work you want help with, and what a good outcome looks like"
  },
  {
   "type": "source_text",
   "required": false,
   "label": "Source text",
   "what": "a long source in full: an article, a video or talk transcript, or notes from a book, with its title, author and link"
  },
  {
   "type": "document",
   "required": false,
   "label": "Document",
   "what": "a finished document, such as a Word file, a PDF or a page of notes"
  }
 ],
 "outputs": [
  {
   "type": "document",
   "required": true,
   "label": "Document",
   "what": "a finished document, such as a Word file, a PDF or a page of notes"
  }
 ],
 "you_give": [
  "The reader and the person who will decide.",
  "The decision to make and the deadline.",
  "Your evidence, with where it came from.",
  "The options, including doing nothing.",
  "Known costs and limits (optional).",
  "Your own draft to revise (optional)."
 ],
 "you_get": [
  "A decision memo or short brief in connected prose.",
  "A one-sentence reason for the form it chose.",
  "A list of assumptions and evidence gaps.",
  "A small test with an owner and review date, when evidence is thin.",
  "A review plan with the decision owner and the questions to settle.",
  "Sections you can expect: summary, options, costs, risks, gaps and review plan."
 ],
 "use_when": [
  "You must ask a leader to choose between two or more options.",
  "You have notes and data but no clear written case.",
  "A draft memo reads flat or mechanical and needs better reasoning.",
  "You want a plan for how a team will read and decide on it."
 ],
 "skip_when": [
  "You need an architecture decision record or an incident write-up: use the Decision record writer for an architecture decision, or the Incident postmortem writer for an outage.",
  "You need setup steps, runbooks or instructions: use the Incident runbook writer or the Developer docs writer, or write the steps as a plain checklist.",
  "You still do not know if customers want it: do the problem and demand research first, because a polished memo cannot supply missing evidence."
 ],
 "output_sample": {
  "input": [
   "The reader and the decision owner",
   "The decision to make, and the deadline",
   "Your evidence, with sources and dates",
   "The options you see, including doing nothing",
   "Known costs and limits (optional)"
  ],
  "prerequisites": [
   "A chat AI that can read the skill's reference and template files"
  ],
  "output": [
   {
    "name": "Form choice",
    "contains": "One sentence on which form fits: short decision brief, decision narrative, or PR/FAQ, and why."
   },
   {
    "name": "Memo or brief",
    "contains": "The problem, the baseline, the options, the proposal, costs and risks, written as connected prose. Parts by form: the decision narrative has all of these plus next checkpoint and evidence appendix; the PR/FAQ has a future press release, customer FAQ and internal FAQ; the short brief has ask and owner, context, options, recommendation and next step."
   },
   {
    "name": "Assumptions and evidence gaps",
    "contains": "What is fact, what is assumed, and what is missing, with how each gap affects the decision."
   },
   {
    "name": "Test or checkpoint",
    "contains": "When evidence is thin, a small proposed test with scope, owner, review date and what to inspect."
   },
   {
    "name": "Review plan",
    "contains": "The decision owner, how the memo will be read, the questions to settle, and where the outcome is kept."
   },
   {
    "name": "Revision notes",
    "contains": "For a revision, a short list of what changed in the reasoning and why."
   }
  ]
 },
 "how_to_use": [
  "Download the skill folder. Your AI needs to read its reference and template files. Or paste the instructions into a chat.",
  "Tell your AI the reader, the decision owner and the deadline. A good first message puts it all in one go, for example \"Memo for the leadership team. Owner is the head of operations. Decision needed by Friday. Should we move support to a new help desk tool? My evidence is below.\"",
  "Paste your evidence and options. Say which are facts and which are guesses.",
  "Read the form choice first. Ask for a different form if it misses.",
  "Check the gaps list. Fill what you can, or keep the proposed test.",
  "Ask for the review plan, then send the memo yourself. The skill does not send or schedule anything.",
  "Once the decision is made, file the memo where your team keeps decisions, and put the review date from the plan in your calendar. If the decision is later reversed, add a short note to the memo saying what changed and why."
 ],
 "checks": [],
 "next": [
  {
   "name": "Weekly status update writer",
   "url": "https://useaiblocks.com/prompts/weekly-status-update-writer",
   "why": "Weekly status update writer"
  }
 ],
 "source": {
  "by": "Magnus Hedemark",
  "repo": "magnus919/agent-skills",
  "url": "https://github.com/magnus919/agent-skills/tree/92c327e525da69c9ad3812fd223a1770e977c2e3/amazon-memo",
  "licence": "MIT",
  "original_name": "amazon-memo",
  "commit": "92c327e525da69c9ad3812fd223a1770e977c2e3"
 },
 "credits": [
  {
   "title": "amazon-memo skill",
   "by": "Magnus Hedemark",
   "url": "https://github.com/magnus919/agent-skills/tree/92c327e525da69c9ad3812fd223a1770e977c2e3/amazon-memo",
   "used": "Copied under the MIT licence. We gave it a plain name and replaced the source repo's other skill names in When not to use with the AI Blocks items to use instead. We added Before you start and After this sections that link to other AI Blocks steps."
  }
 ],
 "files": [
  "evals/evals.json",
  "LICENSE.md",
  "README.md",
  "references/forms-and-length.md",
  "references/readability-review.md",
  "references/review-practices.md",
  "references/sources.md",
  "references/synthetic-examples.md",
  "templates/decision-narrative.md",
  "templates/pr-faq.md",
  "templates/short-brief.md"
 ],
 "links": {
  "page": "https://useaiblocks.com/skills/narrative-decision-memo-writer",
  "markdown": "https://useaiblocks.com/skills/narrative-decision-memo-writer.md",
  "json": "https://useaiblocks.com/skills/narrative-decision-memo-writer.json",
  "instructions": "https://useaiblocks.com/skills/narrative-decision-memo-writer/SKILL.md",
  "download": "https://useaiblocks.com/skills/narrative-decision-memo-writer.zip",
  "api_item": "https://useaiblocks.com/api/v1/items/narrative-decision-memo-writer",
  "api_document": "https://useaiblocks.com/api/v1/documents/skill/narrative-decision-memo-writer",
  "mcp": "https://useaiblocks.com/mcp"
 }
}