onboard-brain

Fill the brain by conversation. This is the single most important skill here — everything else is only as good as what this collects.

Step 0 — First-time setup (only if needed)

If CLAUDE.md still shows a SETUP-REQUIRED notice, the brain isn't set up yet. Do this first:

1. Ask, in one message:
   • What's your full name?
   • What's your main email address? (Only the email-summary skill uses it, to send you your summary.)
   • What would you like to call your assistant? (Suggest "Mona"; any name works.)
2. From the brain's folder, run: bash setup.sh --owner "<name>" --email "<email>" --assistant "<assistant name>"
3. Relay any warning setup prints, especially about git remotes. Re-read CLAUDE.md: it now carries their name and the notice is gone. Then continue below.

If the chosen assistant name belongs to someone in their life (a spouse, a child), point out the mix-up it can cause, and offer to add a rule to CLAUDE.md §0 so the two are never confused.

Rules

• One question at a time, or a small cluster at most. This is a conversation, not a form.
• Write as you go. After every 2–3 answers, save to the right file immediately. Never hold answers in context waiting for the end — if the session dies, the work is lost.
• Never invent. If an answer is vague, ask once, then write it as given with (unconfirmed) — do not smooth it into something cleaner than what was said.
• Let them skip. "Skip" moves on and leaves the TODO:. Don't push.
• Show progress. Every few rounds: "That's identity done. Three sections left."
• The user can stop at any point. Say at the start that this can be done in pieces and resumed later.

Where to start

Read brain/00-index.md first. If some sections are already filled, skip them and say so. Ask which area they want to start with, and offer the recommended order:

1. Identity — 10 min — biggest immediate payoff
2. People — 15 min — family first, then work
3. Work — 15 min
4. Routines & the year's calendar — 10 min
5. Life admin — health, finance, home — 15 min
6. Voice — 10 min, needs writing samples

Section 1 — Identity → brain/identity/

• Full name, what people call you, where you're based, timezone, languages.
• What do you do for a living, in a sentence you'd say at a party?
• What other roles do you carry? (father, treasurer of the society, the one who handles parents' paperwork…)
• What's the one thing you'd want an assistant to know on day one so they don't embarrass you?
• Hard rules about your time — anything that must never be scheduled over?
• What's your current single biggest focus? What would make this year a good one?
• What are you deliberately not doing right now?

Section 2 — People → brain/people/

Family first: "Walk me through your immediate family — name, relationship, where they live, anything I'd need to know to help you take care of them."

Then: "Who are the 5–10 people you deal with most for work?"

For each person, create a file from brain/people/_template.md. Filename: firstname-lastname.md, lowercase. Ask for birthdays as you go. Don't interrogate — get name, relationship, one line of context, and the birthday; depth accumulates later.

Mirror every birthday into brain/routines/calendar-of-the-year.md and add a row to brain/people/directory.md.

Section 3 — Work → brain/work/

• What entities exist? Company, freelance, side projects — which are actually active?
• How does money come in? Who pays you, on what cadence?
• What are you working on right now? Create a project file per active project from brain/work/projects/_template.md.
• What comes back on a clock — standing meetings, reports, invoices, filings? → recurring-obligations.md
• What tools do you live in? → tools-and-accounts.md (locations of logins, never logins)

Section 4 — Routines → brain/routines/

• Walk me through a normal weekday, hour by hour, roughly.
• What happens every day no matter what?
• When are you sharpest? When do you crash?
• What does a week look like — anything fixed on particular days?
• Now the year: birthdays, anniversaries, insurance and policy renewals, passport/licence expiry, tax deadlines, festivals that change your plans, annual checkups.

The year calendar is the highest-value thing in this whole section. Push a little here.

Section 5 — Life admin

• Health: blood group, allergies, ongoing conditions, regular medication, your doctors, insurance policies, when your last full checkup was.
• Finance: accounts by nickname only, fixed monthly outgoings, subscriptions, income sources, who your accountant is. Stop them if they start reading out a number — say plainly that account numbers don't go in files, and record where the details live instead.
• Home: rent/EMI dates, utilities, vehicles and their insurance/service dates, document expiry dates, the plumber/electrician/mechanic you trust.

Section 6 — Voice → brain/identity/voice.md

This one needs artefacts, not answers.

• "Paste me 3–5 messages you actually wrote — one to family, one to a client, one to a vendor or official."
• From the samples, infer: greeting, sign-off, sentence length, formality per audience, emoji use, spelling variant. Write what you observe, and say what you inferred so they can correct it.
• Ask directly: "What phrases do you hate seeing in your own name?"

Finishing

1. Update every status marker in brain/00-index.md (⚪ → 🟡 → 🟢).
2. Write today's memory/log/YYYY-MM-DD.md noting what was captured.
3. Move anything unfinished into memory/open-loops.md as "brain gaps".
4. Tell them the top 3 gaps remaining and what each one would unlock.