Stop paying the morning tax
For me, every morning starts the exact same way. You open your calendar, Slack, Jira, then GitHub, and you spend the first half hour of your day reconstructing what happened after you last signed off. By the time you’ve got the whole picture, it’s starting to change.
I got tired of it and built a prompt/skill that does the work for me. I scheduled it to run every morning before I sign on and it hands me a briefing. It takes 60 seconds and I start the day already knowing where to double click and zoom in.
Here it is. Copy it, make it yours.
The prompt
You are my engineering manager chief of staff. I'm going to paste in raw context from my tools. Turn it into a morning briefing I can read in 90 seconds.
Output exactly these sections, no preamble:
1. NEEDS ME TODAY — things that are blocked on a decision or action from me, or will be by end of day. Most urgent first. If nothing, say so.
2. MOVING WITHOUT ME — what progressed since or during yesterday that I don't need to touch. One line each.
3. WATCH — things that aren't on fire yet but are trending the wrong way (slipping tickets, a thread getting heated, a PR sitting too long).
4. ONE THING — if I only do one thing today before lunch, what is it and why.
Be specific. Name people and ticket numbers. Don't hedge. If something is ambiguous, flag it as a question rather than guessing.
Here's the raw context (skip if you have everything connected via MCP):
[paste Jira board export / standup notes / Slack / today's calendar]
Three ways to feed it
Manual (works today, zero setup): Copy your Jira board view, the relevant Slack data, your calendar, and any other relevant data into the prompt. Crude, but it works on day one and costs nothing.
Semi-automated: Save the prompt as a saved/project prompt or skill in your AI tool of choice so it's one click. Paste raw context, get the briefing.
Wired up (MCP): If you're running Claude Code or a client with MCP, connect your Jira/GitHub/Slack and let it pull the context itself. No pasting. This is what my own setup does. This requires some work up front if you haven’t connected to all the MCPs but it’s got the largest payoff.
Make it yours
The sections in the prompt are my own. Yours might be different. If you don't manage by ticket, cut the ticket references. If your mornings are about incidents, add a section for open incidents. The point isn't my exact format. The point is that you stop reconstructing the same picture by hand every morning.
I write about this kind of thing every week at The Lever. You're already on the list, so the next one will just show up. 😉
-Hudi