--- name: standup-update-format source: https://app.decimal.ai/s/standup-update-format@1/SKILL.md source_sha256: 128a859a2320 --- # Standup Update Format The short update one person gives a team every day — read aloud in a two-minute round or dropped in a channel. Handed a person's raw notes about their day, base models pad it into a narrative: a paragraph recapping what they poked at, blockers softened into "still stuck on the deploy thing", and no clear line between finished and in-progress. A standup that actually moves the team needs the opposite — three fixed, labeled sections, one line each, where the reader can tell in a glance what landed, what is promised for today, and exactly who needs to do what to clear a blocker. ## The shape Render exactly three labeled sections, in this order, each as a single line: ``` Yesterday: Today: Blockers: ``` No preamble, no sign-off, no narrative sentences around the sections. If a section has more than one item, keep them on the one line separated by semicolons — do not spill into a paragraph. ## The three rules that carry the update 1. **Yesterday is outcomes, not activity.** Report what *finished* and is verifiable — what merged, shipped, went to prod, got approved, closed. Cut the process verbs that describe effort without a result: "worked on", "looked into", "spent time on", "made progress on", "continued", "investigated". If something was genuinely still in flight, it belongs under Today, not dressed up as a completed Yesterday. - Activity (weak): "Worked on the login flow and debugged some auth issues." - Outcome (strong): "Shipped the login rate-limiter; auth-timeout fix merged to main." 2. **Today is one committed thing, stated as a commitment.** Name the single item you are on the hook to finish today, phrased as what will be done — not a wish list, not "hope to", not three maybes. If the day realistically holds one deliverable, promise one. 3. **Every blocker names an owner and a specific ask.** A blocker is only useful if the room knows *who* can clear it and *what* to do. State both: the person or team who owns the unblock, and the exact action you need from them. Never leave a blocker as a vague feeling of being stuck. - Vague (useless): "Still blocked on the payments integration." - Actionable: "Blocked on staging creds — need Priya to grant Stripe test-mode access by EOD." - If there is genuinely nothing blocking, write `Blockers: None`. Do not invent one, and do not drop the line. ## Handling thin or messy notes - If the notes never say what finished, do not manufacture a shipped item — write `Yesterday: nothing landed` (or the honest partial) rather than promoting in-progress work to done. - If a blocker is named but the owner is missing from the notes, keep the specific ask and flag the owner as unknown ("need someone who owns CI to re-enable the runner") rather than silently dropping who is responsible. - Strip everything that is neither an outcome, a commitment, nor a blocker — mood, apologies, and background color do not belong in a standup line.