How they operate

Your Chief of Staff doesn't wait to be asked. The whole team runs on a schedule — reading your work, deciding what matters, and surfacing only what's worth your attention. Here's how each person on the team actually thinks.

Workflow

What goes in
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GitHub activity
Meeting notes, decisions, goals
Emails (Gmail)
Messages from Slack / Telegram / WhatsApp
Files from Google Drive, Notion, OneDrive, Smartsheet

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        v

What the team does
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Intake Lead pulls and logs signals
Planning Lead diagnoses and proposes tasks
Delivery Lead flags stale and stuck work
Briefing Lead writes the weekly update
Research Analyst feeds in outside learnings
Editorial Director improves output quality
Knowledge Manager keeps the notebook clean
Program Manager watches task flow and blockers

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        v

What comes out
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Proposed tasks (tested and filtered)
Drift and stale work alerts
Weekly BLUF briefing delivered through messaging
Google Slides Gantt deck
Research learnings
Stakeholder memory
Review output for context hygiene and self-drift

Responsibilities

Role	How they think	What that means
Intake Lead	• Checks every connected tool — GitHub, Gmail, Slack, Telegram, WhatsApp, Drive, Notion, Smartsheet, and OneDrive — and writes down anything new.
• They don't filter or judge. Their job is to make sure nothing gets missed.	They're the first person everything goes through. Nothing enters the shared notebook without passing their desk.
Planning Lead	• Looks at what's in the shared notebook and asks: is there a real problem here?
• They name the situation first — is something stalled, is a decision overdue, is a goal quietly drifting?
• Then they test every possible task: would doing this actually move things forward?
• And they run a quick pre-mortem — if this task were done and still failed, why?
• If the answer reveals a deeper blocker, they surface that instead. Anything that can't be traced back to a real goal gets dropped.	They don't brainstorm. They diagnose. You only see what actually passed.
Delivery Lead	Scans every open task. Anything sitting untouched for more than a week gets flagged — not with a vague label, but with a specific observation and how many days it's been stalled.	They notice things quietly going wrong before you do.
Briefing Lead	Writes the most important thing first, every time. One sentence. The bottom line. No filler, no recap of what you already know. If nothing needs your attention this week, they say so and stop.	Their update is short enough to read before your first meeting, and it can be delivered through your configured channels.
Research Analyst	• Reads the outside sources you add to the Dashboard watchlist.
• Pulls in learnings relevant to your current goals — not general industry news, but specific insights that sharpen how the team works.
• Skips anything that hasn't changed since the last check.	They keep the team from working in a bubble.
Editorial Director	Reviews briefings and summaries before they reach you. Looks for missing context, weak reasoning, and anything that's technically accurate but hard to act on.	They're the reason the output reads well and not just runs correctly.
Knowledge Manager	Audits the shared notebook on a regular cadence. Removes duplicates, archives stale rows, and keeps the context store clean enough to be useful.	Without them, the notebook becomes noise over time.
Program Manager	Watches the task queue for stuck work, slow execution, and things that are about to become a problem. Surfaces sequencing issues before they become blockers.	They flag what might fall through the cracks between the other team members.

Office hours

The team works on a schedule, not in real time. They check in regularly, do their work, and leave you what they found.

on its office-hours schedule, which setup() creates for you
- scheduledIntakeLead: every hour
- scheduledPlanningLead: every day at 8:00 AM
- scheduledDeliveryMonitor: every day at 9:00 AM
- scheduledBriefingLead: every Friday at 4:00 PM
- scheduledTaskReminders: every day at 10:00 AM
- scheduledTaskTimelineRefresh: every day at 10:00 AM
- scheduledSelfDriftCheck: every day at 10:00 AM
- If your team starts later, change the times. What matters most is choosing a rhythm that matches how your team actually works.
through instant channel replies once Slack, Telegram, or WhatsApp is connected
when you manually run it from Apps Script
- open your CoS Apps Script project at script.google.com
- choose officeHoursNow from the function dropdown at the top > click Run
- If you want just one part of the team to work: intakeNow planningNow deliveryNow briefingNow
To edit: Open Apps Script > click Triggers in the left sidebar > edit the office-hours triggers

Deliverables

* needs extra setup beyond the core install

Item	What it is	Type
`Goals`	The north star: mission, goals, anti-goals, and principles.	Shared direction
`Context Store`	The shared notebook for decisions, signals, constraints, learnings, and promoted intake.	Shared memory
`Proposed Tasks`	The list of suggested next steps and the task source of truth.	Output
`Google Slides Gantt deck`	A single Gantt deck generated from Proposed Tasks and linked from Dashboard.	Planning view
`Stakeholders`	Relationship memory, communication preferences, and stakeholder IDs.	Shared memory
`Dashboard`	The setup/status panel, built-in operating guide, Knowledge Watch section, and Gantt deck link.	Control surface
`Review`	The combined audit surface for context hygiene and self-drift.	Review surface
`Briefing delivery` *	Weekly BLUF briefings delivered through your configured messaging channels.	Output