path: root/docs/design/2026-06-10-daily-prep-template-spec.org

Here's what I propose to be the new Daily Prep template with guidance for you and a strict format. Review and ask any questions you might have.

== STARTING DAILY PREP == 

There are only two times when I run daily prep. First, when I want to create the daily prep for a day in the future. Second, when I want a day's daily prep updated.

When creating the next day's daily prep, assemble the information and content using the following as guidance. At the end, you should review it with me and ask me if I agree on the priorities. If not, work with me to add/remove/substitute the days priorities and work blocks. that's also a trigger that the todo.org file is stale as it should be easy to identify my current priorities by looking at the toro.org file. 

Regardless of if I'm creating or updating the daily prep, if no triage-intake has been done in the last hour, starting daily prep should trigger that action first. the information coming in may impact what can be achieved that day, and we should respond ASAP by reviewing and update the daily prep with this in mind. Make sure this is in the daily prep workflow.

== FORMAT AND CONTENT EXAMPLES ==

* Heads-Up
This is where you'll put items that might frame the day. 

Examples:

---

It 's a meeting-dense morning: 09:00 SWE discussion, 10:00 Software Team standup, 11:00 General standup. Real focus time only opens at noon.

---
Note: this example is a standing item that's always in the daily prep. Make sure it's there. Birthdays, vacations, holidays, big events will all be in either my work calendar or my personal calendar. This is where that information should be placed. 

It's someperson and someother person's birthday today.
Happy Halloween.
Your anniversary is in 3 days.
Your trip to Tampa for SOFWeek begins on Friday.

---
Note: this example is a standing item that's always in the daily prep. Make sure it's there. From time-time you will have reminders that are either due, imminently due, or past due, and this should be reported. 
  
Reminders Past Trigger:
Asking Hayk about Kostya's contract was set for the 6/1 1:1 with Hayk which got rescheduled for today. 

---
Note: this example is a standing item that's always in the daily prep. Make sure it's there. From time-time I will ask you to report on a metric to the daily prep and section is where that metric should be reported. 
  
PR Approval State Since Friday/Yesterday
- your [[linear-url] [SE-227)] [[ghe-url] [PR #222]] was reviewed and approved on whichday. It's ready to merge.
- There are X number of open PRs awaiting review.

---

* Day's Priorities
When coming up with the days priorities, you'll have to consider both what's in Linear (the official company issue tracker), and what's in the project's todo.org file. 

Also, thank you Claude for adding the links to tasks, linear tickets, and pr-reviews. I know you considered where it should go and chose the org-header to make it easier to access. However, I'd prefer to have the links in the content along with all the other relevant information. Here's the format for this section along with examples. Note that the three dashes separate the examples and aren't part of the example content. 

  '''
  <format>
  org-level-2: STATUS [#PRIORITY] TASK-DESCRIPTION :org-tag: 
      <property-drawer>

      Relevant Information: (rename as appropriate)
      [todo.org link]
      (summary of what success is on this task, today's achievement goal, and any relevant preparation
  </format>    

  </examples>
      
      [[spec url] [somelargespectitle]]: Finish phase 2 of the spec and be ready to start phase 3 tomorrow (day's goal of a larger task)
      The overall spec is due this coming Friday. After this portion, there's only phase 3 left, then you have X days for review/polish. 
      
      ---
      
      [[phone-url] [phone-number]]: Call someperson and deliver somenews. (full task)
      Somenews happened last week. You need to connect with someperson and let them know before someconsequence happens. 

      ---
      
      [[document-url] [somedocumenttitle]]: Design plan to deliver proposal X (day's goal of a larger task)
      Proposal is due in 2 days on Monday.       

      ---
      
      [[linear-url] [linear-ticket-id]]: Complete Tech Debt ticket
      This is also good prep for when this topic comes up in your meeting with someteammember at somemeeting on somedaywithinthe5daywindow. 

      ---
      
      PR Review: [ghe pr-url] [pr-id - the-pr-subject-rephrased-if-more-than-40-characters]]
      This has been a tricky area of the product and we have seen X number of REQUEST-REVIEWs in this area in the last week. The REQUEST-REVIEWs are mostly from someteammember, the author of this PR. 

      ---

      Goal: 
      The deliverable you committed to Eric in the AdTech review: scan the PoL sample for over-water devices, reconstruct 2–3 device tracks, correlate to an AIS vessel, hand Eric mock data for the Figma entity view. This is the afternoon focus block at 2 pm.

      ---

      Recap and Goal: 
      Vulcan is SOCOM's procurement portal ([[https://www.vulcan-sof.com][vulcan-sof.com]]), where companies submit capabilities against posted opportunities. DeepSat has an account. Sarkis's [[https://www.notion.so/deepsat/Vulcan-SOCOM-Procurement-Portal-2aff237f0fee80109eb4d43ac6c91f89][Notion page]] tracks three workstreams: a NORAD/NORTHCOM J84 CORE proposal, the TE 26-3 maritime experiment submission (Orion's Belt drone-simulated VLEO repasses, dark-vessel detection, sub-30s cross-cue), and Scout Card drafts.

      Where it stands: Nerses and Hayk reviewed the Vulcan submission the night of 5/27 but never posted conclusions back to #team-internal. Eric asked the next morning (5/28 09:21 CT, ts 1779978088.694099) whether the TE-3 half is what they worked on and what the team's next steps are. His thread still has zero replies, so the reply is ~13 days late. What he needs: confirmation of the TE-3 connection plus a next-steps list. Pulling Nerses's actual conclusions fits Thursday's 1:1.

     </examples>      
      
   org-level-2: STATUS [#PRIORITY] TASK-DESCRIPTION :org-tag:
      ...
  '''
 
* Meetings / Focus Blocks
The vast majority of content will be here. The meetings and blocks are listed like a schedule with tasks. All the information on Standup Briefs should go here.

General Event Title Guidance
Note the tile is just what the calendar event subject is. No additional information.
No extraneous information (you sometimes put "personal routine" here. That's not useful or actionable information.)
Any information that goes here should be actionable information or a useful reference during the meeting.
The morning

General Event Content Guidance

** 08:30–09:00 — Morning Prep
Morning Prep is about doing what I need to do to prepare for the rest of the day. I read the daily prep and mentally prepare and think through the schedule. I envision what I should say in each meeting, and will spend time refreshing my memory on proposals, project status, progress against deadlines, ensuring I'm reporting everything relevant during my status reports (i.e., standup briefs). 

You will do a triage intake during the session startup (verify and raise the alarm if it's not already there). You will inevitably identify last minute cancellations, conflicts, reschedules, important news, or other items that impact my ability to achieve what I'm setting out to do today. The daily prep workflow is where you take the information from the triage intake and strategically and proactively supply me with what I need to continue to get things done.

For instance: 

Imagine you're me and you see your boss called a one-on-one last night and it overlaps with another meeting you have to settle a question with a co-worker. The triggers: (a) it's your boss and (b) it came up last night. Those tell you whatever the meeting's about, it's going to be important. In this case, you should look at both ny calendar and Eric's calendar to see when we're available next. Identify what might be the most desirable time that we're both free and recommend it, listing the others. Then follow up with the offer: Tell me when you'd like to reschedule the meeting with Eric and I'll handle it. I'll add a cj-comment telling you which one, and then you would go draft a comment to include as a Slack message to Eric so he gets the heads-up as well, run /voice personal on it, send it, then reschedule the meeting to the time I indicated.

Imagine your meeting got bumped an hour earlier and now conflicts with the time that was blocked off to prepare for that same meeting. You would check any of the earlier work blocks and recommend substituting a block of lesser priority, or perhaps to use 15 minutes of the morning prep's half hour.

Example Content:

'''
Resolve scheduling your conflict between meetingX and meetingY first thing. For MeetingX, here are the alternative dates and times everyone is available.
- someday at sometime to sometime (this is the only time when you'll have the full hour that's scheduled). 
- anotherday at anothertime (this is only 30 mins. Could the meeting time be reduced only to the high priority topics?)


or:
- I can't find any free time on someperson's calendar. you need to connect with them directly. here's the first draft of the Slack message to send:
  [message content]  
  
---

Your next meeting's agenda is to discuss how we should handle the chore queue. Review the proposal you wrote. 

---

Important FYI: You got a [slack-url] [Slack message]] from someperson, saying "somebignews happened."

---

'''
** 09:00–09:50 — SWE Team Discussion
Note the tile is exactly how the calendar event says. No additions. 

Example Content:

'''
Only Kostya accepted as Vrezh is at the dentist.

Agenda:
- Discuss [Some Technical Question]
- Announce [Some Change Being Rolled Out]
- Recognize [Some Achievement]
- Resolve [Some Open Team Question]
- Communicate [Some Information] because [Why It's Important]
'''  
** 10:00–10:30 — Software Team Daily Standup
 There should never be a separate standup section. the daily standup briefings should go immediately under the meeting I report in.

 This is the software team's meeting. What goes here must be directly relevant to achieving the engineering goals. It's about what have I been doing to push the platform forward, or the demo forward. It's architecture docs, PRs, Linear tickets, meetings with potential partners that may have use cases, discussions about integrating the platform with other systems, security issues discussed with BBN, reviewing the Cerbicore datasets and what I discovered, 

 It's not about one-on-ones, attending other standups, maintenance on my own personal tooling, updating my LinkedIn profile, the SOCOM portal next steps, sending Slack messages or sending email, meeting prep, booking travel, or interviews with people who aren't going to be engineers.

 It's not about that I met with Jason. It's about what came out of that meeting -- did Jason finish his work on the branches and CI/CD?
 It's not about that I went to a manager's meeting, but it could be that Subbu talked about a new development with a potential partner or customer that has impact on the engineering team.
 It's not about having a 1:1 meeting with Nerses, but it could be that Nerses wanted to see more demos in the weekly software iteration reviews.

 Though the questions are about what have I done, it's really about (a) how have I moved us closer to acheiving our engineering goals (b) what do I plan to to work on that will move us closer to achieving the engineering goals, and (c) what information do I have that might impact the team or the team's goals.

 Below the sections Yesterday, Today, and Blockers have parenthetical questions to explain what should go there. In the actual template, they should omit the questions. 

 Here's a few examples of what goes in. 

 ---

Yesterday (What did I do since last time I was in this standup?)
- Completed engineering playbook v0.5 and sent to Jason, Ryan, Subbu, Eric, and Vrezh for
- Met with Eric and Ryan and Vrezh about next steps for Linear adoption. Goal is to have this in place for a Sprint Planning on Monday. 
- Integrated Kostya's build-first-validate-together proposal into the SDLC (committed, pushed)
- SE-127 completed and merged. Reviewed 5 PRs that needed to be reviewed. 
   
Today (What will I be working on until the next standup?)
- Debug GitHub Enterprise SSH clone issue and get access to prototype repos
- Meeting with BBN to discuss them partnering on the platform's sandbox testing for the D2P2.
- I am working on the TAK server integration plan and hope to get the second section done. 

Blockers (Anything the team should know?)
- The intermittent problem with CI/CDs is now recurring and Jason Ouelette is on vacation until next week.
- Ryan wants to move to Jira because Linear can't run in a controlled environment we need for CMMC Level 3. No decision yet, and I'll keep you posted as discussions continue. 
 
** 10:30–11:00 — Focus Block
Focus Blocks are blocks of time on my calendar, but they are marked as free. Others will see them, and my time is open for booking if something comes up. However, they will see that I have blocked this time off for focused work, and will therefore self-select out of scheduling something if it's not important or urgent. They will just wait until my next one-on-one with them, or Slack a message asking if I can meet. These get booked at the end of the day before, and are the first things to shrink if needed. The second item to be shrunk is Lunch, but that needs to be at least a half-hour daily. 

Don't assign specific items in focus blocks. "No plan survives contact with the enemy." or "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."

I don't know what kind of day I'll have, how much sleep I will get, or whether something will happen that may impact my emotions. I may want to tackle the biggest thing. I may want to take it a bit easier because I don't have the focus. Let me choose. List out a few things on my task list that are a priority for me to get done this week, which are not necessarily just the top priority things. If there's a deadline I've accepted and it's around the corner, list that task, even if there are other higher priority items. If this is a short block, tell me what's in the PR queue, or recommend doing some grooming of the chores in Linear, or meeting prep for a later meeting. If it's an hour or more, list out the bigger tasks, even if they won't get to done in the time allotted. Typically, this will be a rehash of the daily priorities above.

Since this is a time of action and there's not much time, make sure you link to all the items I might need to see. 

Here are some examples for a half hour block: 

- Recommended: merge #222 (provide the link)if re-review cleared, else chore queue (provide the link to the Linear chores). 
- Review Nerses's pitch deck (provide the link) that he asked you to review.
- Draft and send a reply to Partha at BBN (link to email). Here's a first draft: (add a draft of the email to get me started).
- Review the resume that Hayk submitted for a position (link to the resume). 
** 11:00–11:30 — General Daily Standup
Again, there should never be a separate standup section. the daily standup briefings should go immediately under the meeting I report in. And this is very different than the software team daily standup. This is business level.

I need to talk about anything related to getting us closer to our business goals, and since the software team is moving the business forward, 

Did we finish a feature Nerses or Hayk wanted?
Is someone on a long vacation (so others might expect team velocity to be slower)?
Am I going on vacation within the week? Am I traveling such that I'll be difficult to reach on specific days? 
How were the sessions I attended at the recent conference and what did I learn?
Did we get a decision from the partner about using their technology?
Is the team confused about something related to Hardware (Hayk), an upcoming conference we're going to (Sarkis), an operational or IT process (Subbu/Ryan), or our business strategy on some topic (Nerses). 

Same format: Yesterday (means what happened since last time I attended), Today (means what I will make happen short-term), and Blockers (issues that are concerning to me, concerning to the team, or might impact others or the business). 

** 11:30–12:30 — Focus Block
An hour block. This is enough time to make progress on some of those bigger items above.

Recommended:
[[document-url] [somedocumenttitle]]: Design plan to deliver proposal X (day's goal of a larger task) Proposal is due in 2 days on Monday.

[[linear-url] [linear-ticket-id]]: Complete Tech Debt ticket
** 12:30–13:00 — Lunch
Typically, this will be an hour, but on busy days, this is a half hour. This could also fall anytime between 11:00 AM and 1:30 PM. Don't have me doing any tasks or preparing for anything. This is not DeepSat time, it's personal time. 
** 13:00-13:30 - Important Meeting


Attendees: Nerses, Hayk, Craig, Eric, Sarkis, Subbu,
dustyn.b.carroll.civ@mail.mil Zoom:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88416255495?pwd=iaxSSjnbiUOaVourCh755jdFmkpdGW.1&jst=2

[[Meeting Prep url] [Meeting Prep]]

Summary: 
This is Dusty Carroll — Civilian, J7 (Experimentation), JIATF South.
He's DeepSat's primary JIATF South contact. He shared the human impact
narrative during the Florida trip (Feb). His boss is Jeff Stahl
(Director of J7). Rob Shaw (Coast Guard, J7) and Ben Foster (Deputy
J7, built Mage modules at NGA) are his counterparts.

This meeting hasn't appeared in previous daily preps or session notes.
First time seeing "DeepSat Updates" with a .mil attendee. Likely a
JIATF South touchpoint — treat as a customer-facing meeting.

Add whatever it is that I need to contribute to this meeting.
Add whatever it is that I need to get from this meeting.
Add the questions you think I'll be asked and some responses or "I don't know". If "I don't know" then we need to have a block of time scheduled somewhere earlier the day before to do the preparation. Do NOT wait until the day-of-the-meeting to add a prep block of time. 

** 13:30-14:00 - Arusyak / Craig
Here's a less on what NOT to do and why:

The KIT project handed off some documents that amounted to a meeting prep for the discussion I had with Arusyak. We prepped over a week ago, but it was on a topic I know well, so I didn't think I needed preparing. I'd just read the documents a few minutes before the meeting started for the information about her resume and to remind me of the topics I'd cover. And this is what I found in the Meetings / Work Blocks for that meeting:

13:00–14:00 — Craig <> Arusyak sync — [[https://meet.google.com/fdp-qpgo-tex][join Meet]] (prep below)
...with nothing underneath. There was no prep below. I had minutes. I wanted to find the doc. So I used Emacs search for her name and found it only in a few places.

There it was underneath a meeting that was labeled "16:45–17:15 — Thursday prep (next-day half hour — Thursday is heavy, so do it)"

The recurring 2-week personal sync (resume + interview help; she's a friend, ex-Vineti engineering lead, job-searching in Lisbon — Al Jazeera contract non-renewing ~July 30). Folded in from the kit handoff.
- *The one thing to drive:* the resume formatting cycle is blocked on her. After the 5/27 call she was to send the resume as Google Docs + MS Word so you could apply formatting fixes; the source files never arrived (cold since 5/27), and everything downstream (network post, interview prep) is gated on it. Ask her directly — did she send the Google Docs / Word files, and if not, can she send them now?
- *Talking points:* (1) resume source files — get them; (2) how she's doing, emotionally and on the search (~1yr runway, Lisbon house paused); (3) Al Jazeera restructuring (PDI/PNO merger, layoffs, new CEO) — any change to the ~July-30 / two-month-buffer timeline; (4) Ali (her friend, suspected next non-renewal) — gentle check; (5) interview prep — flag it's queued and ready (question bank + STAR-L) for after the resume settles.
- *Docs in kit (review before the call):* =arusyak-resume-feedback.org=, =arusyak-resume-call-agenda.org= (5/27), =interview-prep-question-bank.org=, the STAR-L writeup, the contact profile. After the call, log the outcome back in kit (contact history + bump LAST_CONTACT/NEXT_DUE).

First, the meeting was that day, not Thursday. It was clearly on my calendar. It had been moved a day earlier, and I remembered, but the agent didn't check.

Also, by the time I found it, the meeting was starting. Where were the documents I'd spent time prepping on? I didn't have time to search the project for them. I expected them to be linked, not merely mentioned.

In the end, I had to wing it. It wasn't a disaster, but I didn't achieve half of what I needed to. I failed a former employee who was looking for my help during a time of crisis. It's okay, but I felt terrible for not reviewing the document more thoroughly. Ultimately, it's my responsibility, not yours, but I do need help, and this is where you can really help: be thorough, check every meeting, and find and link all the relevant docs. I am very appreciative of the help you do give. I'm grateful for it. But I do need it to be consistent. Thank you. 

** 14:00–16:30 — Focus Block
Another big block. You know what to do now.

Examples:

---

Recommended: The deliverable you committed to Eric in the AdTech review: scan the PoL sample for over-water devices, reconstruct 2–3 device tracks, correlate to an AIS vessel, hand Eric mock data for the Figma entity view.

[[document-url] [somedocumenttitle]]: Design plan to deliver proposal X (day's goal of a larger task) Proposal is due in 2 days on Monday.

[[linear-url] [linear-ticket-id]]: Complete Tech Debt ticket

** 16:30–17:00 — What Kind of Day Has It Been?
That's what I used to put as the end-of-day review and prep for tomorrow. Block this time on my calendar. 

This is where I'll summarize what happened that day and plan for the next one. We'll typically be generating the daily prep during this time.

Note that there's no deadlines section in this daily prep template. That's because the upcoming deadlines get listed here. 

---

Tomorrow: SOFWeek prep
Tomorrow: Feature-flag granularity decision
Mon 5/18: Platform-architecture Tech Deck
5/17–5/21: SOFWeek* (Tampa, FL)
5/23 Fri: TAK-server plugin scenarios
5/29 Thu: STRATFI submission window opens