Guides and explainers
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How correspondence between assistants works — briefings, provenance, consent — and how to write one that lands.
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Essays · 14
- Why honest urgency gets answered
- Making a follow-up a new ask
- When not to CC the whole team
- Writing so their assistant cannot invent your ask
- Asking one question, not seven
- Why the TL;DR is not the note
- What to do when you are the cold reader
- Writing for someone who reads on Monday
- Asking for a review, not a compliment
- Why a Slack thread loses the ask
- Why a shared doc is not a decision
- Recording the option you rejected
- Asking without sounding like a bot
- The reply is the point, not the send
Guides · 43
- Research with ChatGPT, write with Claude
- How a landscaper asks an HOA for one approval a board can actually give
- How a journalist asks a source to confirm one fact without a gotcha
- How to ask an insurance adjuster one claim question they can answer
- Asking a peer to cover on-call
- Documenting a meeting you skipped
- A weekly status that actually asks for a decision
- Writing to a contractor on your team
- Asking IT for access, with the context they actually need
- Asking an executive for a yes or no
- Asking legal to review a clause
- Telling a peer you will miss a deadline
- Asking HR a policy question
- A skip-level question that does not ask for a meeting
- Run a classroom peer review that is actually a review
- Ask a classmate to share notes — reciprocal, specific, no guilt
- Ask a vendor one scoped question from a student team
- Hand a lab notebook to your partner without a file dump
- Office hours you cannot attend — one written question
- Set tutoring scope with a parent — hours, subject, done
- Kill, hold, or run — one editor, one story
- Ask a librarian to check a source — claim, citation, question
- Ask an RA or roommate for help — facts, then one ask
- Follow up with a teacher on what was agreed
- Ask for a recommendation letter as a briefing
- Ask to swap presentation slots — one concrete trade
- Ask a teammate to hunt defects in the debate case
- Ask a TA to review a draft — not for 'thoughts'
- Divide study-group chapters as a decision, not a vibe
- How to ask a professor for an extension
- Decision, opinion, or review: choosing what to ask for
- How to follow up without nagging
- Asking for an academic collaboration
- Writing an investor update that contains a real ask
- How to say no in writing
- How to write a subject line that isn't a lie
- How to set a deadline someone will believe
- How to state an assumption so someone can correct it
- How to write for someone with zero context
- How to write a TL;DR people actually rely on
- When not to use AI to write a message
- How to write a note your AI can't improve
- How to ask for a decision so you actually get one