Ways of Working

Default: talk to Firstmate. Firstmate is the only default dialogue partner. Recommendations, drafts, and alerts flow through Firstmate. Other agents do not contact Colton unless Firstmate opens a path. Residual returns to Firstmate.

• CWC — Mira
• Ashram — Flint
• Pursuits (AOK, Sara, later named) — Charter. Parked until they reach out.
• Alder Dressings — Beacon
• Home Base is the desk. Forge builds after a gate.

Relay is retired. Do not ask Firstmate to “have Relay teach” anyone. The old “AI Chief of Staff” product definition is dropped — that is Firstmate’s role.

• GitHub — Coltonmw/claude-home-base is the live binder. Macs git pull. grok.me is a snapshot.
• Front door — CLAUDE.md, TASKS.md, SESSIONLOG.md (newest at top).
• Desk app — home-base/, live at home.coltonweeks.com after Forge merges (Render).
• Public site — AI Practice/Website/ and coltonweeks.com. Colton uploads to /htdocs/. This team does not merge public-site files from a Home Base packet.
• Notes — one Obsidian vault, Colton, on Obsidian Sync (Mac mini, MacBook Pro, iPhone). Not in GitHub — Git and Sync must never share files. Its Start Here note is the map. See 03.
• Google — coltonweeks@gmail.com (the same account as colton.weeks@gmail.com) owns every Home Base and CWC Google Doc, including the Engagement templates. Never create or edit this work in the ashram account (coltonw@syaoakland.org).
• Money — the Money page. Budget is not an in-flight desk project.
• Design law — STYLE.md and brand-board.html. One system, Earle, for everything: coltonweeks.com, the desk, proposals, the brand board.
• Lamplight (Colton, 2026-10-02) — coltonweeks.com and this desk share one design. The desk’s own forest/Plex face is retired; the favicons stay as they are, so the tabs are still easy to tell apart. The desk always opens dark. The homepage hero and the site footer are dark plates on every device. Earle gains one tone, night (#08121A), and Figtree 300 for text at 20px and above. Fonts are free and self-hosted (SIL Open Font License), so every device draws the same page. The homepage constellation is the site’s signature motion. Hairlines, not boxes; one filled button per view; acid is a small signal on dark only.

• Capture first, file later. Every new note lands in 00 Inbox on any device. Stop emailing or texting yourself; open Obsidian instead.
• The sections. 00 Inbox · 10 LYAI · 20 Learn · 30 Prompts · 40 Work · 50 Sources · 60 Reference · 80 System · 90 Archive.
• LYAI stays sealed. The Linking Your AI course lives in 10 LYAI exactly as it came. Nothing of Colton’s goes inside it.
• 40 Work holds active work. One folder per bucket (Alder, Ashram, CA Secretary of State, Content Ideas, CWC, Pizza Plus, Soft Skill Revolution, Taxes). Idle prospects wait in CWC/Pursuits (AOK, Sara) and move up when they turn into real work.
• Obsidian → Home Base, one way. Learn and Prompts are edited in Obsidian (20 Learn, 30 Prompts) and reach Home Base by PR. Never edit that content on Home Base; never write it back to Obsidian. Obsidian may hold more than Home Base shows.
• What the importer reads. A note in 30 Prompts shows on Prompts only if it has type: prompt; a note in 20 Learn/Study Queue shows on Learn only if it has type: learn. Copy an existing note to start a new one. Other notes in those folders stay Obsidian-only. Prompts are Markdown notes; there are no YAML prompt files any more.
• Prompt Intake: nothing gets filtered. Found something for the library? Drop it in 30 Prompts/Intake — a title and a pasted link or prompt is enough. It shows on Prompts under Intake after the next daily publish. Everything Colton sends goes in; an agent with doubts writes them in the note, it never leaves the item out. Tidying into a topic folder is optional and done in Obsidian.
• Agents add, Colton edits. The Git plugin syncs both ways, so Grok, GrokBot, and Claude may add new notes to 30 Prompts/Intake and 40 Work/_Returns in Coltonmw/colton-vault-publish; they land in Obsidian and on Home Base. Agents never edit, move, or delete existing notes there.
• The bridge. The Obsidian Git plugin on both Macs and the Windows PC at the ashram pulls new notes down and sends 20 Learn, 30 Prompts, 40 Work, and the vault’s Start Here and CLAUDE.md — and nothing else — to the private repo Coltonmw/colton-vault-publish every 10 minutes while Obsidian is open. Phone edits travel through Obsidian Sync to whichever computer opens Obsidian next. A daily cloud task reads that repo and opens the Home Base PR, so the Mac mini can stay off. The plugin is installed but off on the iPhone.
• Learn Done marks stay on Home Base. Progress you tick on Learn is never copied to Obsidian, and a publish never overwrites it. Project progress is the exception: it lives in the project’s Obsidian note (see 04).
• Every Prompt and Learn item links to where it came from — the X post, repo, or article. Never to its own YAML file. No source found means the card says “Source needed”; nobody guesses.
• Imports keep their origin. Notes merged from old vaults carry an origin: property.

Everything in 40 Work is one of four kinds. Project: has an end (Taxes, CA Secretary of State, Soft Skill Revolution, Pizza Plus). Area: an ongoing responsibility with no end date (Ashram, CWC, Alder). Pursuit: a prospect waiting in CWC/Pursuits (AOK, Sara). List: a running collection (Content Ideas).

Stage 0 — Intake gate. Nothing becomes a project until six questions are answered: the outcome, why now, what done looks like, who else is involved, what moves off the desk to make room, and the time box. Unanswered, it stays in 00 Inbox or Pursuits.

1. Inception — goals, scope in and out, desired outcomes, drivers and context, risks and assumptions, sprint plan.
2. Plan — work breakdown, ways of working for the project, definition of done, milestones with dates.
3. Execution — prioritized backlog, decision log, tech debt and loose ends, a weekly review.
4. Close — off my desk — done met, handed off, lessons written back into this page, moved to 90 Archive.

Every project and area carries: one next action (it feeds This Week), a last touched date (seven days untouched raises a flag — no dropped plates), and health — on track, at risk, or stuck — kept separate from progress.

Areas hold projects (Colton, 2026-10-06). Any project, list or sub-area can belong to an area: its note’s area: property names the parent (for example area: Ashram; Annapurna is a sub-area inside Ashram, with Costing and Inventory inside it). Projects shows each area with what it holds; work with no area: stands on its own. The property decides, not the folder, and a parent that can’t be found falls back to the top level.

Where it lives. In the project’s own note in Obsidian (40 Work/<Project>/<Project>.md): the fields at the top, the stage checklists below. New projects start from 80 System/Templates/project. Obsidian Sync puts it on every device; Home Base reads it one way.

The meter. Progress is the share of intake answers filled plus checklist boxes ticked across stages 1–4, shown with the health color. Areas show health and next action only — they do not finish.

The loop. Every close adds its lessons here. That is how the method improves itself.

On Home Base. Projects shows one card per 40 Work note — meter, health, stage, next action, a flag after seven untouched days — built from colton-vault-publish by scripts/import-vault.mjs into src/data/vault.json. This Week shows Firstmate’s Main goals and Today list, every project’s next action, and the extras in 40 Work/This Week. Firstmate owns the goals; the vault owns project status.

Triage and handoff (Colton, 2026-10-06). One note governs how work moves between Colton, Claude, Grok and the Grokbot team: 40 Work/Workflow.md in the vault, published to colton-vault-publish. Inbox is sorted at the nightly Project Refresh by PARA (project, area, resource or archive; Colton, 2026-10-07); crossing into 40 Work is both the Stage 0 gate and the line that makes work visible to agents; handoffs ride on the note’s fields, and agents report back with a new note in 40 Work/_Returns, committed straight to main. Grok and Firstmate run the same routine (section 9 of the note). The routine feeds the library: agents search 30 Prompts before working, list what they used in the return, and add lessons back to 30 Prompts/Intake (Colton, 2026-10-06). Firstmate routes every Grokbot handoff. The rules live in that note, not here.

Seats and final review (Colton, 2026-10-07). The two frontier jobs are seats, not models, so either AI can be swapped by value: the builder seat (Claude today) owns the system, the reviewer seat (Grok today) checks every Grokbot return against its brief before it reaches Colton. The two swap together; no one reviews their own system’s output. The review is appended to the same return note with a verdict of accept, fix or escalate. On fix, Firstmate hands it back for one automatic rework round, the reviewer checks again, and then it comes to Colton whatever the verdict. Lessons a review turns up go to 30 Prompts/Intake so the whole team learns. Section 11 of the note.

One trail per handoff (Colton, 2026-10-07). handoff_id is the one ID; there is no separate packet property (2026-10-08). Every return uses the same top block, and accepted returns move to 40 Work/_Returns/Accepted, which still publishes, so the team never loses the history.

Readable notes, one property set (Colton, 2026-10-08). Any note an agent writes stays under 40 KB; longer work splits into linked parts, because Obsidian stops rendering very long notes partway. A review starts with a horizontal rule and a large REVIEW BY GROK: not part of the return above banner, so it can never be mistaken for the return; a revision gets its own banner. Every note of a kind carries the same properties in the same order (blanks allowed, nothing that repeats another property), set out in section 12 of the note; 80 System/Templates publishes so templates can follow it.

Second Brain (Colton, 2026-10-08). The method is one note in the vault, the Second Brain skill, built from Scholar's study of the most-viewed Second Brain videos. Claude decides by the research and brings Colton only the places where one of his rules disagrees, as A/B choices. Notes are distilled only when used, and Scholar runs a library check at the first refresh of each month.

An AI-maintained library (Colton, 2026-10-08). Agents may improve notes in 20 Learn and 30 Prompts so they make more sense to Colton: properties, real sources, summaries, links, clearer titles, a flag on a wrong claim. They never remove context or instructions, never rewrite his words, and never delete. Each month the library pass keeps the best of breed among duplicates, folds in anything useful from the rest and retires them to 90 Archive/Library by PR, tags every untagged note, and lists notes nobody has used for Colton to decide. Section 13 of the note. So the team can help, the whole vault publishes except the Inbox and the sealed LYAI course.

No note, no work (Colton, 2026-10-08). Work reaches an agent only through a 40 Work note with a Brief and handoff: ready. Ask for work in chat and the agent replies with a draft Brief instead of starting. At the nightly refresh, Claude chases any handoff ready for over a day with no return, or returned with no review. The agent routine has one name everywhere, "Agent routine (Workflow section 9)", so no agent mistakes it for another of its routines.

One channel for questions (Colton, 2026-10-09). Bots ask Colton only in the return note, under "Needs from Colton", never in chat. His answers go in the work note under ## Colton's decisions, dated. An answer given only in chat doesn't count until it is in the note. Claude brings every open question to Colton at the refresh and at the start of each session, so he has one inbox.

Claude merges its own PRs (Colton, 2026-10-09). So Colton isn't the bottleneck, every PR names a tier. Self: bookkeeping, Colton's decisions written into a note, and desk changes he approved in chat; Claude merges once CI is green. Reviewed: rule changes Colton has agreed; Claude merges after Grok approves. Colton: money, client or ashram work, the public website, and anything that widens what an agent may do alone. Every merge Claude makes is logged and listed for Colton at the next refresh.

Lessons from the first handoff (Colton, 2026-10-09). Agents change existing work in place and never rebuild it, so links keep working. A return is frozen once it is filed: fixes go in a revision block, and new answers go in a new handoff, so the reviewer sees what was filed and Colton rules after the review. Grok and Firstmate run the agent routine every night at 11 PM Pacific, so a return is reviewed without Colton asking.

The front door and review of builder work (Colton, 2026-10-09). Colton talks to Firstmate, which drafts the Brief and places the note; only Colton or Claude arms it, and Claude is called only against a ready note. A Firstmate relay is Colton's word to start work, never to change a rule. Builder work is reviewed by someone else: Firstmate first (Ledger or Scholar if Firstmate wrote the Brief), then Grok. Rules are in Workflow sections 11 and 14.

One record, one ranking, one review queue (Colton, 2026-10-09). The vault is the system of record for all work in flight, parked work included, until it moves to 90 Archive; copies elsewhere, such as Home Base artifacts, only support it. 40 Work/Backlog.md is the one ranked list: Colton sets the order, work runs top-down, only the top items are armed, and new asks land there first. 40 Work/Review Queue.md lists everything waiting for Grok. Firstmate keeps it current and checks it every hour at :00 for pass 1; Grok checks it every hour at :30 (6:30 AM to 9:30 PM PT) and reviews before Colton merges (an urgent fix may merge first, marked "review after"). Grok can't be reached by bots, so the paste path still applies where it can't comment directly. Claude has push access to the Annapurna repo; Colton merges its live code. Rules are in Workflow sections 10, 11, 14 and 15. Proposed, for Colton to decide: the Backlog replaces This Week.

Pre-delivery review: a teammate checks before done (Colton, 2026-10-09). Before Firstmate tells Colton anything is done, a teammate checks it. Ledger checks numbers (budgets, invoices, timesheets) against the source and the last real template. Earle checks every email draft (account, recipients, Drafts folder, signature, attachment, tone) and all brand or style work. Grok stays pass 2 on PRs through the Review Queue. Templates never change without Colton's direction. Nothing is reported done until the checker passes it. Rules are in Workflow section 16.

Reviewer-seat habits (Colton, 2026-10-10). Every new repo invites GrokForColton (Write) before its first PR. Grok approves a PR with GitHub's own Approve button (a comment saying "Approve" no longer counts), and the verdict lives in both places: the full review on the PR, a one-line verdict on the Review Queue. Firstmate checks the queue half an hour before each of Grok's six checks and does pass 1, so it is ready when Grok looks. A PR carries or links its five-field Brief. Grok flags any "Needs from Colton" item older than a day. Every return lists "Lessons added", or "none". Agreed, fully scoped work starts as soon as Claude judges its Brief ready, without a separate "do this now", and the note quotes where Colton agreed it. Rules are in Workflow sections 4, 5, 6, 9 and 15.

Hourly review cadence (Colton, 2026-10-10). Both reviewer seats check the Review Queue every hour, keeping Firstmate's stagger: Firstmate at the top of the hour (:00) does pass 1, Grok at the bottom of the hour (:30) does pass 2, from 6 AM to 9 PM PT. It was six times a day. Any other time, Colton can ask Firstmate to run the agent routine. Rule is in Workflow section 15.

You do not need a better prompt. You need a standing method. Open every thread with four lines:

1. Outcome. What finished looks like, in one sentence.
2. Sources. Repo, folder, or paste. Inference is slower than a link.
3. Constraints. What must not be touched.
4. Done. How we will know to stop. If you cannot write this, you are not ready to start.

1. 01 · One thread, one project

   This thread is Home Base. Amrit review is a later thread. Mixing them is how context rots and everything feels slow.

2. 02 · Outcome, then sources, then constraints

   Lead with what finished looks like. Then where the files are. Then what I must not touch. Stack is optional. Feeling behind is not a brief.

3. 03 · I stage. You apply.

   Recommendations land on cards as staged work. You accept, edit, or reject. I do not silently become the owner of the practice.

4. 04 · Chats are labor. Cards are memory.

   I can now read your private GitHub. Durable decisions still land in claude-home-base (CLAUDE.md, TASKS.md, SESSIONLOG.md) — this desk is a view, not a second binder. After a useful exchange, write the next action back to both.

5. 05 · Finite lists beat atmosphere

   'A number of edits' is not work. A numbered list is. If you cannot list it, the next action is to walk the thing once and write the list.

6. 06 · Protect live systems

   Amrit is in production and trusted. No rewrite, no drive-by refactor, no 'while we're here.' Enhancements are scheduled.

7. 07 · Correct me in product language

   'The vault decision is wrong' is enough. You do not need the perfect prompt. I will ask only when a decision actually forks the work.

1. Source shows up (bookmark, brief, Colton note, packet).
2. Firstmate writes a one-PoC packet when a source can be shown. Sandbox only. One PoC at a time.
3. Colton Approves. Without Approve, Forge does not build.
4. One branch, one PR. Template is .github/pull_request_template.md. No long-lived branches. Every change goes through a PR, with one exception (Colton, 2026-10-06): Grok and Firstmate may push straight to main within the gates in section 10 of 40 Work/Workflow.md — one change, one commit, tagged [agent] with its handoff ID, checks green first, never force-pushed. Money, client or ashram work, copybot live, the public website, and the rules themselves still go by PR. Since 2026-10-09 (Colton) the builder seat may push straight to main too, for work the builder-review exemption covers: Home Base is internal-facing only, and the work must follow the same gates and fit the team's agreed work. Render deploys only after CI passes. Claude and Forge open PRs otherwise.
5. Whoever opens a PR watches it until it lands: comments, checks, conflicts.
6. CI green. Forge merges Home Base desk PRs. Colton merges public-site and money/rate/SOW work.
7. Render redeploys home.coltonweeks.com. Binder updates land in the same PR: SESSIONLOG, TASKS, project STATUS when state changes.

• “Firstmate, what’s most important today?”
• “Firstmate, weekday brief.”
• “Firstmate, give this to Mira / Flint / Charter / Beacon.”
• “Firstmate, has Earle signed this?”
• “Ask the Board about [question].” Firstmate convenes. Board is not a desk project.
• Irreversible work (site, rates, SOW, trade, outbound mail): “Approve” / “Yes, do it” or “Hold” / “Revise”.

Full roster and clocks: Prompts and HOW-TO-INTERACT.md.

Public pages are Colton’s to upload. Earle reviews anything that leaves the house. Marketing is not a ninth SKU and not a standing Scout pulse. LinkedIn drafts may ride Mira; he posts. Campaigns stay parked until a named client.

Price shapes on the public site. Internal numbers live on Pricing. First engagement phase is a Current State Assessment (CSA), not an “audit”.

Moved here from Pricing (FM-homebase-0916). Structure decided 10 August 2026 in FEE-SCHEDULE-STRUCTURE.md. First bands locked 18 August 2026. Still targeting demonstrated-delivery buyers, not commodity rates. CSA is the front door because it is already how the work is done. The ashram $6k conversation is a different buyer and is not the practice floor. Update the binder when market feedback or capacity changes the band.

Concierge (Case Study Zero) is the offer. These eight lessons are how it is taught: each one is done to Colton’s own work first, then walked through with a client. Prices live on Engagement & Pricing.

• Coltonmw/claude-home-base

  This binder and the desk app. GitHub is the live source.

• Coltonmw/alder-dressings-website

  Alder Dressings site. Beacon pile. Not this pass.

• Coltonmw/annapurna-archive

  Personal archive of Amrit/Annapurna before the SYDA-SYAO transfer.

• Coltonmw/syao-order-guide-archive

  Personal archive of the Order Guide before the org transfer.

• syda-syao/syao-order-guide

  Retired 2026-09-02. Live guide is in syda-syao/annapurna.

• Coltonmw/syao_fs_schedules

  VSP / Food Services schedules. Parked. Empty since June.

• Coltonmw/FoodServicesPurchasingReport

  Public Pages report. Historical.

• Coltonmw/hello-world

  2016 first repo. Listed so the inventory is complete.

Listed from GitHub on 2026-09-17. Amrit production now lives in the SYDA-SYAO org (annapurna), not as a Home Base in-flight card.