clone-brief

Clone Brief Skill

"Sorry, can't make it — can you represent me?" usually transmits a vibe and a

prayer. Then your representative gets asked the one question you didn't cover,

guesses, and you spend Thursday unwinding it. A clone brief is what should have

gone instead of you: your positions with their reasoning, your fallbacks in

order, the red lines that end the conversation, what you'd happily trade — and

the explicit boundary of what your representative may agree to versus must

bring back. One page, readable in two minutes by a colleague, and structured

enough that an agent could carry it too. In a world of A2A meetings, this is

the artifact that attends.

What This Skill Produces

• The clone brief: context in three lines, then stances / fallbacks / red

lines / tradables / delegation boundary, each with the why attached

• A 60-second verbal version for briefing the carrier in the corridor
• A question-anticipation table: the questions likely to come up, with your

answers — including the honest "I haven't decided; here's my leaning"

• A debrief ask: the 3 things you want reported back

Required Inputs

Ask for (if not already provided):

• The meeting: decision at stake, who's in the room, what they each want (as

far as known)

• Your position and — this is the load-bearing part — why; the reasoning is

what lets a representative handle the unanticipated

• What you'd accept as fallback, what's tradable, what's a walk-away
• Who carries the brief (peer? report? someone from another team? an agent?)

and how much you trust their judgment on this topic

Process

1. Compress context ruthlessly. Three lines: what's being decided, why it

matters to you, where the tension is. The carrier has two minutes; history

lessons stay home.

1. Ladder the positions. For each issue at stake: IDEAL (open with this) →

ACCEPTABLE (agree without checking) → BRING BACK (don't agree; capture and

return) → RED LINE (say no in the room, with the scripted sentence to say).

Attach one-line reasoning to each rung — reasoning is what travels;

conclusions alone can't handle follow-ups.

1. Name the tradables. What you'd concede happily and what you want in

exchange — a representative who knows your currency can negotiate; one who

only knows your demands can only repeat them.

1. Draw the delegation boundary explicitly. The sentence that prevents the

Thursday unwind: "You may commit up to X; beyond that, 'I'll take it back

to [name] by [time]' — that sentence is always a win, never a failure."

1. Anticipate the questions. The 3–6 things the room will ask, answered.

Where you're genuinely undecided, say so with your leaning — a

representative bluffing certainty in your name is worse than one honestly

deferring.

1. Script the debrief. Three asks: what was decided · what was said about

[the thing you care about] · what surprised you. Anything more won't be

remembered.

Output Format

# Clone brief: [meeting] — [date] · carried by [name]
## Context (3 lines)
## Position ladder
| Issue | Ideal | Acceptable | Bring back | Red line (+ the sentence) | Why |
## Tradables
[Give happily ↔ want in return]
## Your authority
[May commit up to … · beyond that, the take-it-back sentence]
## They'll probably ask
| Question | Your answer (or honest leaning) |
## Report back
[The three asks]

— 60-second corridor version —
[Spoken: the one decision, your one must, your one flexible, the boundary]

Quality Checks

• [ ] Every ladder rung carries reasoning — the brief works when the

unanticipated happens, or it doesn't work

• [ ] The red-line sentence is scripted verbatim, sayable by someone who isn't

you

• [ ] The delegation boundary is a number or a named scope, not "use judgment"
• [ ] At least one they'll-ask answer is an honest "undecided, leaning X" —

a brief with total certainty on everything is posturing

• [ ] The whole brief fits one page; the corridor version speaks in 60 seconds

Anti-Patterns

• [ ] Do not send conclusions without reasoning — that's instructions for a

puppet, and puppets fail on question two

• [ ] Do not hide the real red line to seem flexible; the carrier discovers it

by crossing it, in public, as you

• [ ] Do not skip the authority boundary — its absence is how "represent me"

becomes "apparently I agreed to a June deadline"

• [ ] Do not write it agent-readable but human-hostile: the colleague is the

primary reader; structure serves both

Related

[[delegation-brief]] hands off ongoing WORK; this hands off a POSITION for a

single room. [[stakeholder-influence-mapper]] for reading the room you're

sending it into; [[the-understudy]] for the deeper version of "represent me."