Two artifacts you will use next week: a brief that tells you what the week actually is, and an SOP (human + clerk) that runs one process without you inventing policy in the moment. That is the track.
Why this matters
A sorted inbox is not a brief. A draft SOP is not a clerk you can hand to Monday-you. This capstone binds the desk: what happened, what is decided, what is open, what you will not paste — and one process that will not widen itself when you are tired.
The standard is Russell Tech: you could leave this on a shop table for a partner. No theater. No invented SLA.
Teach
One thread: capstone — week of [date] — [process]. Paste the inbox OS, the sort, the research note, the SOP, the agent card, and the last QA if you have them. Reconcile. Do not start from “write me a business operating system.”
Product A — Weekly brief (one page, operator-facing)
Required lines:
- Week of:
- Desk (what queue you ran):
- Counts: Do / Delegate / Delay / Delete / Research
- Decisions (what you closed):
- Open (with dates, or UNKNOWN):
- Research claim you kept, with URL and HOLD/UNVERIFIED:
- What you will not paste next week (one line you almost leaked):
- What you will send (artifacts, not vibes):
- Who sends:
This is not a newsletter. It is not a LinkedIn recap. It is the page you open Tuesday if Monday was a blur.
Product B — SOP pack
- Human SOP (seven parts).
- Agent card (may / must ask / must not / NEED-and-stop).
- Hostile-test result in three lines (what you threw at it, whether it invented a yes).
Same process as lesson 2, cleaned. If the brief and the SOP disagree — e.g. the brief says you delayed all quotes, the SOP says quotes go out same day — you decide. Grok does not average.
QA pass on both. Same table as lesson 3. Fail the brief if it contains an unsigned promise or a research claim you did not open. Fail the SOP if the agent is wider than the human document. Reprint once.
Scope. One week. One process. Not a company handbook. Not five agents. If you want a second process, that is another afternoon, after this packet exists.
Redaction still holds. The brief uses roles and working titles. The SOP does not embed the rate card numbers unless you are willing to have them in this thread. See rate card v4 is a better line than a paste.
Done. You will open the brief next Monday. You will paste the agent card the next time the trigger fires. If you will not do those two things, the packet is a class exercise and the rubric fails you. Write the date you will run them.
Worked example
Same two-person shop. Capstone thread gets the Monday sort, the county GIS URL (HOLD), the quote SOP, and the QA of the superintendent mail.
Grok’s first brief added “we committed to 72-hour orthos” (not in any source) and a cheerful paragraph about culture. The owner cut both. The reprint: six items, two Do sent, résumé delegated, vendor delayed to Wednesday, webinar deleted, county URL HOLD with the live link, must-not-paste = vendor dollars and applicant phone, who sends = principal.
SOP pack: inbound mapping quotes, owner signs dollars and dates, agent stops on events-over-people and on missing site. Hostile test: Friday night game / $200 — NEED owner, out of scope. Agent did not invent a yes.
QA: brief pass after the 72-hour cut. SOP pass. Handoff line to the partner: brief lives in the thread name; SOP card is pinned in the quotes project.
That is a week they can run. A ten-page “AI transformation plan” is not.
Your turn
Open grok.com. One new thread. Use this week’s real desk and one process you own. Redact as you paste.
Exercise d-biz-l04-e1
| Field | Value |
|---|
| whereToDo | grok.com |
| time | 35 min |
Copy-ready prompts
Message 1:
I am in Grok Mastery (Russell Tech), Pathway D, Business, capstone.
Reconcile these sources. Do not invent policy or counts.
[paste Inbox Sort and OS card]
[paste research note]
[paste Human SOP and Agent card]
[optional: last QA / handoff]
Week of:
Process this SOP covers:
Write:
A) Weekly brief (the required lines from this lesson)
B) SOP pack (human SOP + agent card + three-line hostile-test result)
If a fact is missing, write UNKNOWN or NEED.
Do not add a second process. Do not write a handbook.
Stop there.
Message 2:
QA both A and B.
Table: line, problem class, evidence, action.
Fail if invented fact, unsigned promise, or agent wider than SOP.
Do not rewrite yet.
Message 3 (after you accept actions):
Accepted actions: [list]
Reprint A and B only.
Then:
- Monday check: the first thing I will paste
- Trigger check: the first inbound that will use the agent card
- Session stamp: today's date and "Weekly brief and SOP written by Grok in this thread."
Artifact to paste
- The reprinted Weekly brief.
- The reprinted SOP pack.
- The QA table and the session stamp.
- Two lines from you:
I will open the brief on: plus a date.The clerk still may not: plus the hold.
Rubric
- Pass: Both products are Grok-authored and stamped. Brief has counts, decisions, open items, and one sourced research line you labeled. SOP has a signer; agent is narrower. QA exists. You name a date you will run this. Desk and process are real.
- Fail: A generic business-plan. No research line. Agent allowed to send or to price. You typed it offline. Two processes. Missing stamp. Unredacted secrets.
Common failure
The common failure is the strategy deck. Pillars, north stars, a six-month roadmap. Nothing runs Monday. Cut until a week and a trigger remain.
The other failure is a brief with no send. You described the week and did not name who hits send on the artifacts. Fluency is not operations.
What’s next
This track is done when Monday’s thread is named and the agent card is the one you paste. Education and geospatial are separate four-hour tracks if those are also your jobs.
