One paste. A working chief of staff.

The prompt, the build steps, and the script your Claude Code or COS session runs to stand up a starter chief of staff on your own machine. It interviews you, writes your context to plain files you can read, and prints your first brief. Yours to keep, yours to change.

What's inside

  • The promptDrop it into Claude Code or your COS session. It interviews you about your role, your tools, and the work you keep redoing, then writes what it learns to plain files.
  • The build instructionsStep by step, it scaffolds your context files, one outcome-grouped task list, and a daily brief. No black box. Every file lands where you can open it.
  • The scriptOne runnable setup that wires it together and prints your first brief with a single command. Model-agnostic, MIT-licensed, runs local.

How to run it

Paste and go. Works in Claude Code, Cursor, or any COS session. No account and no install beyond what you already run.
You own it. Self-hosted, inspectable, MIT-licensed. Everything it knows about you lives in files on your machine. Nothing phones home.
From starter to system. This is the on-ramp. When you outgrow it, the full COS and the Glasses are waiting.
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Copy the prompt, or grab the file. It's saved on this device so you can come back to it.

Your kit: the bootstrap prompt.

Open a new, empty folder. Start Claude Code or your COS session inside it. Paste the whole block below and answer the questions. In a few minutes you'll have a starter chief of staff that runs with one command.

Step 1New empty folder Step 2Start Claude Code or COS Step 3Paste, then answer
cos-starter.prompt.md
# COS Starter · the bootstrap prompt
# Paste this whole block into Claude Code (or your COS session)
# at the root of a new, empty folder.

You are my Chief of Staff. Before you do any work, set yourself up on this
machine so everything you learn about me lives in files I can open and edit.

Step 1. Interview me. Ask one question at a time and wait for each answer:
  1. My name and my role.
  2. The 3 to 5 things I redo every week that I wish I didn't.
  3. The tools where my work actually lives: email, calendar, docs, code, chat.
  4. Who I answer to, and who answers to me.
Do not assume. If an answer is thin, ask one follow-up, then move on.

Step 2. Write my context to plain, human-readable files:
  context/profile.md   who I am, my role, how I like to be spoken to
  context/tools.md     where my work lives and how you can reach it
  context/people.md    my reporting lines, both directions

Step 3. Stand up the operating loop: tasks.md + brief.md, grouped by outcome.
Step 4. Write run.sh — print today's brief with one command, then run it.
Step 5. Name the single most useful thing I should hand you first, and wait.
◆ Full prompt copies with the Copy full prompt button
Download the file See the full repo Want it built for your team? Book 30 min