Find work worth doing. Take one useful step.
A free guide for anyone starting, joining or changing a business. Pick what matters, test one change, and learn from what actually happens.
Paste our free prompt into any AI assistant and get back a one-page Decision Trace: what you'll change, what you believe, how you'll know.
Intent directed by Wik — notes from building Stackmates in the open
Before this, Wik commissioned systems in dairy factories and worked in telco billing, so he builds for real operations, not demos.
Worked example: faster quotes, same wait
An agent prepares quotes faster, but customers still wait just as long.
- Find where the work waits. Check the approval queue before adding more automation. If quotes spend most of their time awaiting approval, faster drafting may leave the customer's wait unchanged.
- Choose one bounded change. The human responsible could trial a scheduled approval review for one quote category, within existing permissions and without relaxing approval requirements. Before starting, record the expected effect: shorter turnaround without worse margin, errors, or workload. Set a review window, such as two weeks.
- Review the whole result. Compare turnaround time and accepted quotes with the starting position. Check margin, errors, and staff workload too. Use the evidence to retain, revise, or stop the change. Inconclusive evidence is still inconclusive.
Want an agent to help?
The prompt prepares a Decision Trace: the change you intend, the belief you are testing, the permission for the work, and what the evidence returns. You choose what matters, give consent, accept commitments and risks, and decide when to stop.
Prepare one Decision Trace with your agent
Copy the prompt. Paste it into your assistant with the source material the prompt asks for. You stay captain — review the result before you act.
Preview — first 6 lines. Copy still takes the full prompt.
AI agents drafted much of this site for people and AI agents to read together. You set the purpose, say what an agent may do, judge the result, and decide when to stop. Human authority stays with you.
The chart you change
Same terrain. A different question, a different course.
Name what matters and what you won't trade before choosing a direction.
Bring learning back to the crew.
Explore the map
Start with a question worth asking. These are places to explore, not stages you have to complete.
- ProblemsUse it when a decision starts as a hunch.
- What matters to me?PrinciplesUse it to decide what matters and what you won't trade.
Name what matters and what you won't trade before choosing a direction.
- Where could I go?PrioritiesUse it to choose where to go, what to drop and what you control.
- How do we move together?ProcessUse it to copy a workflow prompt for your next piece of work.
- What could we try?PlayUse it to see experiments and ventures meet reality.
- What can I build on?PlatformUse it to check the tools and standards you can build on.
Purpose chooses the voyage. Identity names what you stand for. Your role can change with the work; your values and commitments still matter. Culture is how the crew lives those values together, especially under pressure. What you learn can change your next decision.
What did you learn, who did it help, and what would you do differently?
Bring what you noticed back to the people doing the work. Finishing a task is not proof of a worthwhile change. Compare what happened with what you hoped for, then decide together what to keep, change, or stop.
Dreamineering is an open guide for decisions and action. Stackmates is software for working together. Play holds the Lab and Ventures. We're testing this in public. Stackmates is still being built, and what we learn lands here.