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Protocol 14 of 18 · Track, Product Management · How we run

Planning your day with a PM agent

Use a PM agent to set, prioritize, and review your daily work. The agent holds context across days so you do not have to re-explain yourself every morning.

Protocol 13 Epic status, project status HTML tracking All 18 Protocol 15 Working with an engineer to unlock you
Why this matters

The pain it
solves

The hardest part of solo or near-solo work is not the doing, it is the deciding. Every morning you have a hundred things you could do. The wrong choice is invisible. You only realize on Friday that you spent the week on the wrong work.

The PM agent solves this. Not by being smarter than you. By holding the context across days, reading the status file, knowing what is open, and putting choices in front of you in the right order. You make the calls; the PM agent does the staging.

The teaching

What this
actually is

The hardest part of solo work is not the doing, it is the deciding

Every morning you have a hundred things you could do. The wrong choice is invisible. You only realize on Friday that you spent the week on the wrong work.

The PM agent solves this. Not by being smarter than you. By holding the context across days, reading the status file, knowing what is open, and putting choices in front of you in the right order. You make the calls; the PM agent does the staging.

The morning routine, in five steps

Same shape every day. Twenty minutes. Sets the rest of the day.

  • Open Claude. Greet the PM agent
    "Good morning. What did we ship yesterday and what should we do today?" That sentence runs the entire flow.
  • PM reads context
    It opens project-status.html, scans open epics, reads yesterday's commits, checks your calendar (if connected), and reads docs/inbox for anything you dropped in overnight.
  • PM proposes a plan
    Three to five things, in priority order, each tied to an open epic. Each one explicit about which agent (or you) does it.
  • You approve, edit, or replan
    You are still the decision-maker. Replan freely. The PM does not get its feelings hurt.
  • PM updates the plan file
    Writes docs/plans/[today].md. That file becomes the day's contract. Anyone (or any agent) who jumps in mid-day reads it and knows where things stand.

Subtleties most people miss

Three things that make this work over weeks, not just one morning.

  • The PM does not assign work to itself
    It plans the work, you do it (or another agent does it). The PM that does its own work loses the planning edge fast.
  • The PM reads what shipped yesterday
    Yesterday's commits, yesterday's project-status updates. That continuity is what makes the PM feel like a partner instead of a daily reset.
  • The PM flags drift
    If you have been In Progress on the same epic for nine days, the PM notices and asks. Drift is invisible to you; you live in it. The PM has fresh eyes every morning.

What this is not

Not a calendar (your calendar stays the calendar). Not a productivity coach (no nudges, no streaks). Not a journal (no feelings logged). It is a planning partner. One specific job, done well.

Try it yourself 15 minutes

Greet your PM and plan tomorrow in 15 minutes

You need the PM agent from your IL agent team installed (or a generic Claude agent with a PM role prompt) and a project-status.html from Protocol 13.

  1. Step 01
    Open Claude Code, ask for the PM agent

    "Use the PM agent. Good morning. What do we have on for tomorrow?"

  2. Step 02
    Let the PM read the status

    It will open project-status.html, list the in-progress epics, and ask one or two clarifying questions about priority or constraints.

  3. Step 03
    Hand it your calendar reality

    Tell the PM: "I have a meeting from 10 to 11 and another from 2 to 3. Plan around them." The PM should propose work blocks, not a wall of tasks.

  4. Step 04
    Approve or replan

    Read the plan. If something is wrong, say so. "Move the epic 02 work to the morning. Move the writing to after the 2pm." The PM adjusts in seconds.

  5. Step 05
    Save the plan

    Ask the PM to write docs/plans/[tomorrow's date].md. That file becomes the morning's first read. Tomorrow you wake up, open the file, and the day is staged.

Outcome

A daily plan written by the PM agent for an actual day, the morning ritual practiced once, and the planning artifact saved to disk. The plan survives a restart, a different chat, and a different machine.

Official resources

Straight from
the source

What you walk out with

By the end of this
protocol

At the retreat

You learn it by
doing it

You greet your PM agent and it plans your tomorrow in three minutes, accounting for an actual meeting in your calendar and the actual epic you have open.

Connects to

Other protocols this
compounds with

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