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You do not need to know a tool’s name. But knowing the shape of a request that works saves a round trip, and a few of these do something you would not think to ask for.

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Getting set up

Who am I connected as?
Add this to my work laptop — I use Cursor there.
Kill the connection I pasted in a chat by mistake.

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Filling the brain

I worked at Vertex from March 2021 to last month as a senior platform engineer. Here’s everything I remember — file it.
Add this to the Vertex role: we finished the Stripe migration a week early and nobody had to work a weekend.
Mine the Vertex role into highlights.
Make a standing rule: I contributed to the payments migration, I didn’t lead it. Never describe me as having led it.
Use the photo on my GitHub profile.
“Add this to the Vertex role” is the phrasing that gets an append rather than an overwrite. If you say “update the Vertex role”, a careful assistant will still append — but the first phrasing removes the ambiguity.

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Resumes

Here’s a posting — tailor my resume to it and tell me what I can’t evidence.
Run a gap report on this posting first. I’m not sure it’s worth applying.
Make a copy of my base resume for the Helios application and cut it to one page.
Show me that resume as text — does it fit on a page?
Publish my Stripe resume and give me the link.
Withdraw the link on the old Helios resume.
Export my Stripe resume.

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The pipeline

Here’s a job — track it. https://boards.greenhouse.io/…
I applied to Helios yesterday for the staff engineer role. Here’s the posting: …
Helios moved me to the final round.
Close out everything I never heard back from — they’re all ghosted.
I just had a call with the Helios recruiter. Team is six people, they want someone to own billing end to end. Log it.
What do I need to chase this week?
What does next week look like?
Draft the follow-ups for anything overdue, using what was actually said on each one.
Save this cut as “Gone quiet”.
Give me a read-only link to my pipeline for my coach.
How’s my search going?
What’s actually going wrong with my search?
Run my weekly review.
Which of my resumes is getting responses?
“What’s actually going wrong” is the one worth remembering. It reaches diagnose_search, which names the step of the funnel that is losing people instead of handing back counts.

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Companies and people

Research Helios and put it on their record.
Who do I know at Stripe?
Which companies have I researched but never applied to?
Sarah at Helios — ping me about her in two weeks.
Get me ready for my system design round at Helios.

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Filing the week

Here’s what happened this week: shipped the billing migration, reconciliation is down to 20 minutes. Call with the Helios recruiter — team of six, they want someone to own billing. Told Priya I’d send her my resume by Friday.
That single paragraph becomes a brain-dump append, a highlight, a timeline entry, and a task with a due date. It is the highest-value sentence in this page.

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Running an instance

Admin only.
Is email set up? Configure Resend with this key and send a test.
Invite priya@example.com and write me the message to send her.
Is anything broken on this instance?
Did that invite to priya@example.com actually send?
Who asked for access this week?
Who changed the Resend key?

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When it gets something wrong

Say so plainly. The tools are designed to be corrected:
No — that number isn’t confirmed. Take it off and make it a standing rule.
You overwrote my Helios research. Can you tell what was there before?
The second one is worth knowing the answer to: no, it cannot. There is no undo, which is why the read-first rule exists and why append_role_brain_dump is the default for new material. Install the hired skill and the whole class of problem mostly goes away.