travel-brief

Travel Brief Skill

Business trips fail in the seams — the connection that assumed zero delays, the meeting address that lived in an email now unreachable on airport wifi, the receipt pile that becomes March's archaeology ([expense-discipline](../expense-discipline/SKILL.md) starts before departure). The brief is one page that runs the trip: the timeline with honest buffers (the failure modes priced in), every meeting's logistics pre-solved and offline-accessible, the contingency card (what happens when the flight cancels — decided calmly, not at gate B7), and the capture habits armed before wheels-up.

What This Skill Produces

• The timeline — the trip end-to-end with buffers at the risky seams, and the timezone math done once
• The per-meeting card — address, floor, contact + backup phone, the prep pointer ([meeting-prep-pack](../meeting-prep-pack/SKILL.md) per high-stakes meeting), the get-there time
• The contingency card — the flight-cancels / meeting-moves / tech-fails branches, pre-decided
• The setup list — offline copies, expense capture armed, the OOO-lite for the office ([out-of-office-designer](../out-of-office-designer/SKILL.md) trimmed for travel)

Required Inputs

Ask for these if not provided:

• The trip's skeleton — flights/trains, cities, the meetings with their stakes (the one that justifies the trip gets named — it shapes every buffer decision)
• The known fragilities — tight connections, first-time cities, winter weather, the meeting that might move; contingencies attach to real risks
• The traveler's failure pattern, honestly — forgets chargers? Books too tight? Loses receipts? The brief compensates for the actual person
• The expense regime — company card or reimbursement, the policy's receipt rules; the capture setup matches it

Framework: The Brief Rules

1. Buffers price the failure modes: connections get the honest minimum (not the airline's optimism), the airport-to-meeting gap assumes traffic, and the trip-justifying meeting gets the arrive-the-night-before rule when stakes warrant — a $200 hotel is cheap insurance on the meeting that booked the flight. Every buffer names what it absorbs.
2. Meeting logistics live offline: every meeting's card — full address with floor/suite, the contact's mobile (and a backup human), the calendar hold with everything embedded — saved offline (the brief as a PDF on the phone), because airport wifi and roaming failures target exactly the moment you need the address.
3. The contingency card pre-decides: flight cancels → the rebooking move (the airline app first, the lounge/counter parallel, the meeting's contact told early — a moved meeting survives; a no-showed one doesn't) · meeting moves → the slack in the timeline it lands in · demo/tech fails → the [demo-script](../demo-script/SKILL.md) backup lives locally. Decisions made at gate B7 under a delay board are reliably worse than the same decisions made at a desk.
4. Expense capture starts at booking: the trip folder (digital) opens at booking time — confirmations in as they arrive, the receipt-photo habit armed ([expense-sheet-design](../expense-sheet-design/SKILL.md): photograph at spend-time, 15 seconds), per-diem rules checked before the first meal, not after. The trip ends with the report half-done because it was captured, not reconstructed.
5. The office runs without you, lightly: the travel OOO-lite — reachable-but-slow expectations set, the one delegate for the can't-wait items, the calendar blocked honestly (including transit — a flight is not "free" for calls, and pretending it is books the day twice).

Output Format

Travel Brief: [trip] — [dates] · the trip-justifier: [the key meeting]

The Timeline

[End-to-end with buffers, each named for what it absorbs · timezone math done · transit blocked honestly]

Meeting Cards

| Meeting | Address (full) | Contact + backup | Arrive by | Prep |

|---|---|---|---|---|

The Contingency Card

[Flight cancels → … · meeting moves → … · tech fails → … — each pre-decided with its first phone call]

Setup (before departure)

[Brief saved offline · trip expense folder open · receipt habit armed · OOO-lite + delegate · chargers/adapters per the personal failure list]

Quality Checks

• [ ] Every buffer names the failure mode it absorbs
• [ ] The trip-justifying meeting has the night-before rule considered explicitly
• [ ] All meeting logistics are offline-accessible with backup contacts
• [ ] Contingencies are pre-decided with their first moves
• [ ] Expense capture was armed at booking, not at return

Anti-Patterns

• [ ] Do not book the airline's optimistic connection for a stakes trip — the buffer is the ticket's real price
• [ ] Do not leave addresses in searchable-later emails — offline or it doesn't exist at the moment of need
• [ ] Do not improvise the cancellation response — gate-B7 decisions are the worst decisions in business travel
• [ ] Do not pile receipts for later — the 15-second photo beats the March shoebox by arithmetic
• [ ] Do not schedule the flight hours as working hours — transit is transit; double-booked days collapse twice