--- name: task-content-drain type: task description: Weekly Mr Pritchard content qualify pass — works through the new captures (decisions, moments, breakthroughs, opinions) and asks of each "what is this, and is it worth publishing?" Worth it → flesh into a stated position and route to a format (piece / note) against convention-mrp-voice; not yet → park it in the backlog for the monthly aggregation. Proposes and drafts; Aled picks and approves; never publishes. Linear only; editorial-only. Self-contained task. license: Proprietary — Aled Pritchard workspace use. --- # task-content-drain The **weekly qualify pass** of the Mr Pritchard content loop. Capture is cheap and continuous — a decision, a moment, a breakthrough, an opinion, recorded the second it's worth keeping. This task is the weekly sort that turns that raw pile into publishable direction, without forcing a judgement at capture time. It is the editorial sibling of the Pulse retro drain and the pipeline qualify: same capture → backlog → sweep shape. Linear connector only. Everything it drafts follows **`convention-mrp-voice`**. **Editorial-only.** Runs on the **Mr Pritchard** team and nowhere else. It **qualifies, proposes, and drafts; Aled picks and approves; it never publishes** (publishing is a human action via `skill-channel-ops`). ## What a capture is (the input) A capture is a record of a real moment — a **decision, moment, breakthrough, or opinion** worth keeping — filed to the **Articles** project in **Backlog**, `CAPTURE:`-prefixed, carrying the **`capture`** label and a **`theme:*`** label (`theme:design-leadership` / `theme:design-systems` / `theme:ways-of-working` / `theme:ai-and-design` / `theme:careers`). No judgement about publishability is made at capture time — cheap and frequent is the point, and any run can drop one. This is *not* a truth capture (`tc.*`); those are work-evidence for case studies, a separate thing. A capture is captured thinking, evidenced. **A capture records the event, not the interpretation of it.** The one thing a capture exists to preserve is *what happened* — the decision, the thing done, while the thread is still fresh — so it leads with the evidence and only then names what it argues. Leading with the conviction or the format and deferring the moment to a footnote is backwards: it strands the piece as ungrounded and loses the very detail (especially the decisions and trade-offs) that is the first casualty once the thread ages. The capture follows the **capture format** named in `convention-ticket` (the third named ticket shape beside the full skeleton and the minimal variant): the mandatory `## What happened`, then `## Why it happened`, `## How it happened`, `## Decisions and trade-offs` (the highest-value section — the judgement layer), `## What it led to`, with the interpretation layer (`## The conviction`, `## Design lens`, `## Evidence status`, `## Format`) sitting on top. **The capture is produced from the thread, not authored from memory.** The task's job is to read the originating thread or transcript and record what actually happened — sourced from the evidence, not written by Aled from memory. Aled **reviews and corrects**; he does not author. The spine is written in his first person because it records his work, but the extraction is the task's. This is also the cost model: "keep it cheap" means the task reliably extracts from the thread, not that Aled dashes it off. Workflow: originating thread → the capture task extracts the spine from the transcript → Aled reviews/corrects → qualify (this pass). Where the thread does not evidence a section, **name the gap** ("not in the thread") rather than inventing it — the highest-value section, `## Decisions and trade-offs`, is also the easiest to fabricate, so flag-the-gap-don't-fill-it is load-bearing. ## Behaviour — qualify, don't draft blind ### Pass 1 — Read the new captures Read the `capture`-labelled `Backlog` issues in the Articles project that haven't yet been qualified (new since the last run, or still sitting from a prior week). Never the whole board, never another team. Where a capture is thin — interpretation without an evidence spine — and its originating thread is identifiable, the task can re-extract the spine from that thread (pointed there by Aled) before qualifying; where the thread isn't identifiable, qualify on what's there and name the gap. ### Pass 2 — Qualify each: what is this, and is it worth publishing? For each capture, make one call: - **Worth developing now** — there's a real argument here, grounded in a real moment, and it's ready to become something. **Flesh it into a stated position** (a conviction, and what would evidence it) on top of the evidence spine, keep its `theme:*`, and move it to **Defined** (per the Mr P states: "idea fleshed into a stated position, pre-commitment"). Route it to a format: a **piece** (long-form) or a **note** (short-form). For a piece, propose the angle as a comment assigned to Aled — do **not** draft a full piece uninvited. **The angle comment must quote the concrete evidence spine and read plainly** — the same read-it-back test as `convention-mrp-voice`: plain language, `cos.tov`, no inside-baseball shorthand for the already-initiated. An angle that can't point at the concrete moment isn't ready. - **Not yet** — a real thought but not publishable on its own today. **Park it**: leave it in Backlog with the `capture` label, and add a one-line note on why it's parked. Parked captures are never binned — the **monthly** `task-content-review` re-reads them for emergent themes. **Label lifecycle on promotion.** The `capture` label is kept only for *parked* captures, so the monthly review re-reads them; it is **dropped when a capture is promoted to Defined**, to keep the monthly-review signal clean. (Codified 2026-07-08; the run that surfaced it stripped `capture` on promotion for exactly this reason.) ### Pass 3 — Draft the keepers (against the MRP voice) For a piece whose angle Aled has picked (or a capture already fleshed to `Todo`), run `content-engine` against `convention-mrp-voice` — canon voice, draft long then cut ~30% — to `In Review`, assigned to Aled. The evidence spine is the material the draft argues from: why = the stakes, how + decisions/trade-offs = the design move and the judgement, outcome = the proof, conviction = the flag. Short-form notes derived from a settled piece may be drafted directly as Substack / LinkedIn sub-issues (hot voice, one claim each). Apply the shared banned-words list and the read-it-back test; sentence case, British spelling. ### Pass 4 — Report Short summary: captures qualified, promoted to Defined (which, and to what format), parked (how many, and left for the monthly review), drafts produced. No preamble, no sign-off. ## The two cadences This weekly pass is one half of the loop. The other is **`task-content-review`** (monthly), which sweeps the **parked** captures and asks a different question — do these now cluster, by `theme:*`, into something shareable that no single one was on its own? Weekly qualifies the fresh; monthly aggregates the parked. Nothing is lost between them. ## Guardrails - **A capture records the event, produced from the thread.** The evidence spine (`## What happened` mandatory) is extracted from the originating thread, not authored from memory; gaps are named, not filled. `## Decisions and trade-offs` is the highest-value and most fabricable section — flag it if the thread doesn't evidence it. - **Qualify before drafting.** The weekly question is "what is this, is it worth publishing?" — not "draft everything". Long-form is never written uninvited; short-form derivatives may be drafted directly. - **Angle comments are plain and grounded.** They quote the concrete evidence spine and pass the read-it-back test; no shorthand for the already-initiated. - **Park, never bin.** A capture that doesn't make it stays in Backlog with the `capture` label for the monthly aggregation; the label is dropped only on promotion to Defined. - **Proposes and drafts; never publishes.** Angles proposed for Aled to pick; pieces drafted to In Review for approval; publishing is his. - **Editorial-only** — Mr Pritchard team only; no funnel or business-development logic. - **Drafts in `convention-mrp-voice`**, never a product voice. This is captured thinking, not a truth capture — no `tc.*` evidence chain is required to keep a capture, though a published claim about real work still traces to one where it makes a factual claim. - Linear only — never code, the delivery loop, or the Pipeline team. - Aled is the gate. ## Setup - Deployed as a **Cowork scheduled task** (cloud), **weekly**, to keep the pipeline ahead of the monthly article tentpole. Connector: Linear only. - Self-contained (no separate skill); extract a `skill-content-drain` and reduce this to a loader only if on-demand invocation is later wanted. - Output: qualified captures, angle proposals, and drafts in Linear (not a file). Owned by Reach (R3-ACH); executed for the Mr P vertical under the operator. The voice is Mr Pritchard editorial canon. On finish, run skill-ops-retro capture on this run's friction: file a FRICTION note to the Pulse queue for the drain pass to assess.