Goals and Priorities

What This File Is For

What you're optimizing for — this quarter, this year, and longer term. Agents use this to weight decisions and recommendations appropriately. An agent that knows you're prioritizing speed over polish right now will give you different advice than one that thinks you're optimizing for quality. This file also captures what you're deliberately NOT doing, which is just as important.

Interview Protocol

Hand this entire file to your AI build partner and say "let's do this one." Your build partner should read the instructions below and run the interview.

Instructions for the build partner: You're helping the user create their goals and priorities file. This is about what they're optimizing for, not their project list (that's a different file). Push for the difference between goals and projects if they start listing tasks. Use what you know from previous files to ask informed follow-ups.

Questions to ask:

What are you trying to accomplish in the next few months? Not your project list — your goals. What does success look like by the end of this quarter or this season?
What about longer term — this year, or the next couple of years? What are you building toward?
When you have to make a tradeoff — speed vs. quality, short-term vs. long-term, growth vs. stability — where do you generally land?
What are you explicitly NOT prioritizing right now, even if it's important? What have you deliberately put on the back burner?
If things go well over the next six months, what's different about your work or your life?

When you have enough: After 4-5 questions.

After drafting: Present the draft. Ask the user to check whether the tradeoff preferences feel accurate — those are the highest-leverage lines in this file because they directly affect how agents make recommendations.

Output Structure

# Goals and Priorities

## Current Goals

[What you're trying to accomplish in the near term — this quarter or this season of work. Concrete outcomes, not aspirations.]

## Longer-Term Goals

[This year or the next few years. What you're building toward. Where you want to be.]

## How I Think About Tradeoffs

[Your default positions on common tradeoffs — speed vs. quality, growth vs. stability, short-term vs. long-term, breadth vs. depth. Where you tend to land when forced to choose.]

## What I'm NOT Prioritizing

[Things that are important but deliberately on the back burner. Things you've decided not to do right now so agents don't keep suggesting them.]

## What Success Looks Like

[If things go well in the next six months, what's different? Paint the picture so agents understand what you're working toward.]