1 files changed, 30 insertions, 2 deletions
diff --git a/.ai/workflows/daily-prep.org b/.ai/workflows/daily-prep.org
index 3f21214..9f706d1 100644
--- a/.ai/workflows/daily-prep.org
+++ b/.ai/workflows/daily-prep.org
@@ -130,12 +130,33 @@ Morning Prep is where Craig reads the prep doc, mentally walks the schedule, and
 
 The Yesterday / Today / Blockers brief nests *directly under the standup meeting it's reported in* — never in a separate section. Plain section labels, no parenthetical questions in the rendered doc.
 
-- *Blockers is always present.* When there are none, write =Blockers: None= explicitly — silence is ambiguous.
+*The brief is a script, not a topic list.* The lines under each label are the words Craig says — complete first-person spoken sentences. Not fragments, not noun phrases, not a "bring these up" list. A topic list makes him compose the sentence live from a cue he wrote the night before and has since forgotten the shape of; a script is readable as-is. "Brief" invites bullets and bullets decay into topics, which is exactly the failure this rule exists to prevent.
+
+The script is a *draft for Craig to edit at the Phase 8 gate*, never words put in his mouth. That cuts both ways: a topic list forces him to compose and so fails safe, while a wrong script reads fluently enough to be spoken unchanged. So it gets the same gate scrutiny as the priorities.
+
+- *Blockers is always present.* A real blocker is stated as a full sentence, not a noun phrase. When there are none, write =Blockers: None= explicitly — silence is ambiguous.
 - *Outcomes, not attendance.* Never "met with <person>" — instead what came out of it: "<person> finished the branch CI/CD work." Never "went to the managers' meeting" — instead the development from it that affects this audience.
 - *No recurring 1:1s or ceremonies* in briefs — they're not news.
 - *Match the standup's altitude.* An engineering standup gets engineering-goal material only: what moved the platform or the demo forward — architecture docs, PRs, tracker tickets, partner meetings with use-case implications, integration discussions, security findings, dataset discoveries. It does NOT get: 1:1s, attending other standups, personal-tooling maintenance, profile updates, sending messages or email, meeting prep, booking travel, or interviews with non-engineering candidates. The three questions are really: (a) how have I moved us closer to the engineering goals, (b) what will I work on that moves us closer, (c) what information do I have that might impact the team or its goals.
 - A business-level (general) standup is different: features finished that leadership wanted, vacation/travel that affects availability or velocity, conference learnings, partner/customer decisions, cross-functional confusion worth clearing up. *Exclude routine maintenance and operational items — PR reviews don't belong here.* Foundational or strategic engineering work does; operations don't.
 
+Worked contrast — the same day's material, written both ways:
+
+#+begin_example
+Topics (the failure mode — a cue list, not a brief):
+  Bring: the freeze status, since Monday-or-later is the current answer.
+  The blocked review. The access request.
+
+Script (what belongs in the doc):
+  Yesterday: I fixed the bug where the selected region stayed editable
+  after an edit, and that's up for review along with the dependency
+  migration.
+  Today: I'm holding merges to development until the demo actually
+  happens, which now looks like Monday or later.
+  Blockers: None — the access request I raised Monday sits with the
+  platform team now, so it's slowing them rather than me.
+#+end_example
+
 (Drafting rules — first-person, deadline precision, recurring-meeting filters, the team-visible test — are in Phase 6.)
 
 *** Meetings
@@ -315,7 +336,9 @@ Combine session history + the sweep + Day's Priorities + WAITING items into Yest
 - *Today*: 2-3 items max, from Day's Priorities. Include non-recurring meetings regardless of response status.
 - *Blockers*: the bar is "did this actually stop me from making progress?" — not "is someone else involved?" Default to under-reporting; Craig adds borderline items at the gate. FYIs come after blockers and stay loose.
 - *Team-visible filter*: only work that left Craig's local environment — pushed, shared, posted, changed in the tracker, or shifts what the team believes or plans. "If I didn't mention this, would someone make a worse decision or duplicate work?" If no, cut it.
-- Readable aloud in under 60 seconds.
+- *Write the words, not the topics.* Every line is a complete first-person sentence Craig can read aloud unchanged — see the worked contrast in the template's Standups section. No bare noun phrases, no "bring up X", and no identifier he wouldn't actually say out loud (a ticket key is fine where the team speaks in ticket keys, and wrong where they don't).
+- Readable aloud in under 60 seconds — roughly 120-150 words across the three sections. Over budget means cut an item, not compress a sentence back into a fragment.
+- *One script per standup.* Two standups on the same day get two separately-drafted scripts, because the altitude rules above admit different material to each. The same text under both headers is a defect, not a shortcut.
 
 *** Step 3: Capture learnings
 
@@ -331,6 +354,8 @@ Also assemble the end-of-day block's upcoming-deadlines list: =DEADLINE:= entrie
 
 Present the assembled doc and ask whether Craig agrees with the Day's Priorities. If not, work with him to add / remove / substitute priorities and blocks until he confirms. Surface here, in one pass: meeting-goal questions, decline candidates, look-ahead flags, carry-forward decisions, and proposed schedule adjustments.
 
+*Standup-script check (blocking).* The prep is not complete until every standup on that day's calendar carries its own script under its header, in the Phase 6 shape — spoken sentences, =Blockers:= present, altitude-matched. Check each standup individually and present the scripts at this gate for Craig to edit. Vacuous on a day with no standup, which is the common case in projects that hold none. This check exists because Phase 6's prose alone did not hold: on 2026-07-31 a prep wrote topic lists under both standup headers while every rule requiring a script was already on the page. Adding more prose to Phase 6 would not have caught that — the prose is what got skipped, so the requirement has to sit on a gate that blocks.
+
 If the gate produces substantive rework, say so plainly: that's a =todo.org= staleness signal — the file should make Craig's current priorities obvious. Offer a task review.
 
 Update mode replaces the gate with a delta summary: what changed and why.
@@ -448,3 +473,6 @@ The prep doc is born in =daily-prep/YYYY-MM-DD-daily-prep.org= and never moves;
 
 *** 2026-06-11: Full template rewrite — strict three-section doc, two run modes, mandatory priorities gate
 From Craig's instructive template spec (written 2026-06-10 evening, after reviewing generated preps) plus four refinements from his review of the first new-format prep. The doc is now exactly =* Heads-Up= / =* Day's Priorities= / =* Meetings / Focus Blocks=. Retired: the separate =* Standup Briefs= and =* Upcoming Deadlines= sections (briefs nest under their standup meeting; deadlines live in the end-of-day block), the =* [Day]'s Anchor Tasks= handoff (carry-forward lands directly in the next day's priorities, which are being built in the same sitting), the thin-link convention (entries mirror their todo.org task's heading and carry their own context — links in the body, never the heading), and standup-only mode (a brief refresh is an Update-mode run). New: two run modes (Create, with a MANDATORY end-of-flow priorities review gate whose disagreement signals todo.org staleness; Update, for when the world moves) both preceded by a triage-intake freshness check (no run in the last hour → run one first); event headers are the exact calendar title with ALL content nested under the event; per-event-type content rules (Morning Prep conflict-resolution strategy with drafts pre-written in the doc ready to send, standup altitude matching with =Blockers: None= explicit and operations excluded from business-level briefs, meetings carrying contribute/get/likely-questions with day-before prep blocks for "I don't know" answers and prep docs always =file:=-linked — the lesson of a prep that existed but couldn't be found in the minutes before a meeting that mattered, focus blocks as linked menus created day-before and marked free, lunch floor, the end-of-day "What Kind of Day Has It Been?" block carrying the deadlines list and generating tomorrow's prep); the look-ahead renders one day per line (=Fri 12:= …) with clear days marked =clear=; a requested-metrics Heads-Up slot rendered only when a metric is active (none yet); meetings verified against the live calendar at build and update time.
+
+*** 2026-07-31: Standup briefs are verbatim scripts, enforced at the Phase 8 gate
+A prep wrote =Bring:= topic lists under both standup headers while every rule requiring a Yesterday/Today/Blockers brief was already on the page. The rule existed and was skipped, so the fix is a gate rather than more prose: Phase 8 now blocks until every standup on the day's calendar carries its own script, and the Standups section says plainly that the lines are the words Craig speaks — complete first-person sentences, one script per standup since the altitude rules admit different material to each, roughly 120-150 words for the under-60-seconds target. A worked topics-vs-script contrast sits with the shape rules, because prose decays back into bullets and an example doesn't. The script is a draft Craig edits at the gate, never words put in his mouth: a topic list fails safe by forcing him to compose, where a wrong script reads fluently enough to be spoken unchanged.