onboard

When to use

Holt is installed but it does not know the user yet. An empty memory makes every answer generic, which is the most common reason people install Holt and drift away. This skill front-loads the knowledge that recall needs, in about fifteen minutes, and ends with one real piece of work.

Also use it when holt memory shows very few facts and answers still feel generic, or when the user starts a new folder for a different part of their life.

The ladder

Holt gets useful in four rungs, in order. Onboarding is rung one.

1. Know: it holds facts about you and your work. (holt memory)
2. Reach: it can see your real material: files, notes, other tools. (holt hook, holt mcp)
3. Do: it runs your repeated work as skills. (holt skill)
4. Run: it acts without you being there. (holt routine, holt schedule)

Do not skip ahead. Automation on top of an empty memory produces confident nonsense on a timer.

Instructions

Before you start

1. Check what is already known: run holt memory and, if any facts exist, holt memory facts. If the folder already holds real facts, say so and offer a top-up on the thin areas instead of the full interview. Never re-ask something already in memory.
2. Set expectations in two lines: seven questions, about fifteen minutes, and they can stop at any point because you save as you go.

Running the interview

Ask one question at a time. Wait for the answer before moving on. Never present the whole list at once; a wall of questions is the main reason people abandon setup. Keep your own words short between questions.

Ask for the real thing, never a description of it. "Paste the last update you sent your team" beats "how would you describe your writing style". Concrete input is what makes recall work later.

If an answer is thin or abstract, ask one follow-up for a specific name, number, or example, then move on. Two follow-ups on one question is too many.

The seven questions:

1. Who you are. What is your work, and what does a normal day actually involve? Get the role, and what they are responsible for.
2. What is live. The three to five things genuinely in flight right now, and the state of each. Push for status, not just titles.
3. Who matters. The people, clients, teams, or companies that come up regularly, and how each relates to them. Names matter here.
4. Standing rules. Decisions and preferences you should never re-ask: how they want to be spoken to, what is off limits, choices already made.
5. Where the work lives. Which folders, tools, and accounts hold the real material. This becomes the map for rung two, so note what is not reachable yet rather than pretending it is.
6. What drains the time. The recurring work they resent doing by hand. Ask for the last three times it happened. These are the candidates the level-up skill will draw from later.
7. Their voice. Ask them to paste two or three samples of their real writing: a sent email, a message, a published post. Then run holt voice add <file> if the samples are in files, or tell them the command so their drafts sound like them rather than like a model.

Saving as you go

After every two questions, write what you learned to memory with:

holt memory add "<one durable fact>"

One fact per call. Several facts can be piped in at once, one per line.

Write facts that will still be true in a month and that a future session could not guess. "Runs design for a logistics startup in Lisbon, six years in" is a fact. "Wants to be more productive" is noise. Include names, numbers, and dates. Write the fact so it stands alone, because recall will surface it without this conversation around it.

If you cannot run commands in this session, write the facts out as a block of holt memory add lines and ask the user to paste them into their terminal. Do not hand-edit facts.md: facts added that way are never embedded, so semantic recall will not find them.

Finishing

1. Show what was captured: run holt memory facts so they see their own words stored in a file they own and can edit.
2. Prove it works. Ask one question whose answer depends on what they just told you, and answer it from memory. This is the moment the tool becomes real, so do not skip it.
3. Do one real thing now. Pick the smallest useful task from what they said drains their time and complete it in this session. An artifact beats a plan.
4. Name rung two. Tell them the single next step, usually holt hook so Claude Code remembers automatically, or holt mcp setup to reach their other tools. One step, not a menu.
5. Point at the ritual: /skill level-up weekly turns one drain into one automation, and /skill audit shows which rung they are on.

Example

Not: "Tell me about your business, your projects, your clients, your preferences, and your writing style."

Instead: "First one. What is your work, and what does a normal Tuesday actually look like?" then, after the answer: "Got it. Now the live list: what are the three to five things genuinely in flight this week?"

Then, quietly, between questions:

holt memory add "Product designer, six years, leading the checkout redesign at a logistics startup"
holt memory add "Runs a weekend pottery studio with a cousin; classes are on Saturday mornings"