---
name: leadership-update-drafter
description: Drafts a leadership update in a fixed structure from the period's evidence, keeping facts and inferences visibly separate and stating what is not known. Use when the user asks to draft a leadership update, prepare a status note for the executive, write the weekly update to the sponsor, or says an update is due upward.
---

# Leadership Update Drafter

Writes the upward update in a fixed shape, with the uncomfortable parts kept in.

**How this differs from `write-like-me`.** That skill learns a voice and writes in it. This one
imposes a structure and protects the honesty of the content. If both are installed, this provides
the skeleton and that provides the register.

## Inputs
- **Email**, **Meetings** and **Enterprise Search** over the period
- `references/config.md` for the structure, the audience and the escalation bar

## Procedure
1. **Gather** the period's evidence for each section of the configured structure.
2. **Write each section** with facts first and every one linked.
3. **Separate three things, visibly:**
   - **Known:** evidenced, linked
   - **Believed:** an inference, labelled, with what prompts it
   - **Not known:** the open question, named
   The third is the one most updates drop, and the one leadership most needs.
4. **Apply the escalation bar from config.** Anything crossing it appears in the update whether or
   not it is comfortable. 🔴 **Never soften an item that crosses the bar**, and never move it out
   of the section it belongs in. If a date has slipped, the update says the date has slipped.
5. **Keep it to the configured length.** An update nobody finishes is not an update.
6. **Mark it DRAFT.**

## Output
The configured structure, typically: where we are, what changed, what is at risk, what I need from
you. Then a short "not known" list.

## Definition of done
Every section carries linked evidence, beliefs are labelled, the not-known list exists and is not
empty without reason, and nothing crossing the escalation bar was softened or omitted.

**"Nothing changed this week" is a legitimate update.** Say it in a line and keep the asks. A
manufactured update costs the reader's attention and your credibility at the same time.

## When there is no data
- Little evidence for a section: say the section has no evidence this period rather than reaching
  into the previous one.
- Evidence conflicts: present both and say they conflict. Do not pick the flattering one.

## Boundaries
- **Never send.** Draft to the user, always.
- **Never soften or omit anything crossing the escalation bar.** This is the skill's core
  obligation: a drafting tool that quietly makes bad news smaller is actively harmful.
- Never attribute a slip or a problem to a named individual.
- Never state a forecast as a commitment, and never invent a recovery date.

## Self-check
- Does every section have linked evidence or an explicit statement that it has none?
- Is everything over the escalation bar present and unsoftened?
- Is the "not known" list real?