Give Copilot a job it can do without you

You get back

• A spreadsheet row per question, tracked week by week
• What moved since last week, and the four-week direction
• New sources quoting you for the first time

It will never, without asking

• Never claim to measure any named assistant’s answers. The card and this file both say so.
• Never act on the findings: no content is published, no page is edited, nothing is sent.
• Never record a competitor’s non-public information.

You get back

• A before-and-after table of what actually changed
• One line on why each change matters
• When nothing changed, one line saying so, and nothing else

It will never, without asking

• Never access anything behind a login, a paywall or a trial. Public pages only.
• Never report a competitor’s non-public information even if a source offers it.
• Never characterise a competitor’s intent or finances. Report the observed attribute.

You get back

• A Word document in your usual section order
• Every item carrying the link it came from
• Empty sections left out rather than padded

It will never, without asking

• Never send or publish. Draft to the user.
• Never include anything on the config exclusion list: individual performance, anything about compensation, unannounced departures…
• Never announce something not already announced elsewhere. A newsletter is not the channel for breaking news to a team.

You get back

• Where we are, what changed, what is at risk, what I need from you
• A short list of what is still not known
• Facts and opinions kept visibly apart

It will never, without asking

• Never send. Draft to the user, always.
• Never soften or omit anything crossing the escalation bar.
• Never attribute a slip or a problem to a named individual.

You get back

• Your clashes, named meeting by meeting
• Meetings with no stated purpose and no decision to make
• Focus time against your target, and the exact changes to make

It will never, without asking

• Never accept, decline, move, shorten, cancel or create anything. Every output is a proposal for the user.
• Never touch anything on the config never-touch list.
• Never characterise a colleague’s meeting as a waste of time. Report the absence of an agenda as a fact and let the user decide.

You get back

• Written commentary in your house structure
• A table of causes, with evidence and how much each explains
• The remainder that stays unexplained, stated plainly

It will never, without asking

• Never calculate, recalculate or forecast. Not even arithmetic on supplied figures.
• Never state a cause as certain when the evidence is circumstantial. Label it.
• Never write commentary that attributes a variance to a named individual.

You get back

• The total for the period against the one before
• The three biggest movements, with the owner to ask
• Anomalies no explanation could be found for

It will never, without asking

• Never state a forecast as a commitment.
• Never recommend terminating, resizing or deleting a resource. Surface the movement and the question; the owner decides.
• The provider’s own billing console is the source of truth. This reads an export.

You get back

• Every claim matched to its receipt, or flagged
• Counts by status, and the total value unmatched
• A drafted chaser for each person to chase

It will never, without asking

• Draft, never send. Chasers are drafts.
• Never approve, reject or adjust a claim. Never state a reimbursable amount as final.
• The expense system and the finance ledger are the source of truth. This reads mail.

You get back

• Every stalled thread, with its age and amount
• Who you are waiting on, and who is waiting on you
• A drafted nudge for each one, unsent

It will never, without asking

• Draft, never send. Especially never send a chase to a counterparty on the config exclusion list…
• Never state an amount as owed. The ledger is the source of truth.
• Never escalate a ladder step on your own. The user chooses the step.

You get back

• An Excel sheet of every renewal, each row linked to its source
• What renews in the next 30 days, and what looks like waste
• A drafted cancellation or renegotiation, unsent

It will never, without asking

• Draft, never send. Cancellation and renegotiation replies are saved as drafts for the user to read, edit and send.
• Never cancel, downgrade or modify anything in a vendor portal, and never follow a cancellation link.
• Never state an amount as the authoritative figure. Finance systems and the contract are the source of truth; this reads what arrived in the mailbox.

You get back

• The board pack: change, owner, window, risk, rollback
• Which changes arrived with fields missing
• Prior incidents on the same systems

It will never, without asking

• Never approve, reject or schedule a change. The board decides.
• Never write a rollback plan. Report its absence.
• Never state a risk rating of your own. Report the proposer’s and say it is theirs.

You get back

• A card turning the report into a ticket draft
• The exact fields still missing, written as questions
• Possible duplicates, linked

It will never, without asking

• Never file, create, assign or comment on a ticket without approval. Filing requires a work tracker plugin and the user’s explicit go.
• Never attempt reproduction. No terminal, no staging, no browser steps.
• Never declare a duplicate, a root cause or a severity the config does not support.

You get back

• A dated timeline of what happened
• What was observed, what was believed, what is known
• Open questions, each with an owner

It will never, without asking

• Never post to a channel, never reply to a thread, never update a status page.
• Never assign an action. List open questions with suggested owners for a human to assign.
• Never state a root cause. Surface what the traffic says and label it belief or finding.

You get back

• A shortlist of people, with the evidence for each
• Who to ask first, and who to ask if they are away
• Where it looked, so you can see what it missed

It will never, without asking

• Never external. No sourcing, no candidates, no professional networks, no recruitment use.
• Never infer expertise from a job title, a team name or a reporting line.
• Never surface a document the user cannot already access. Enterprise Search respects permissions and this skill must not try to work around that.

You get back

• Who covers which competency, and what nobody covers
• What each interviewer needs beforehand
• Afterwards, the evidence, with disagreements shown

It will never, without asking

• Never recommend hire or no-hire, never rank candidates, never produce an overall score.
• Never create or send calendar invitations. Propose.
• Never include anything about a candidate not supplied for this process, and never search for a candidate externally.

You get back

• A day-by-day plan for the first fortnight
• Who they meet, and why that person
• What exists for them to read, and what is missing

It will never, without asking

• Never create calendar events or send invitations. Propose holds for approval.
• Never include anything about the joiner’s compensation, background or personal details.
• Never surface documents the joiner will not have permission to open once they start: note them as access needed instead.

You get back

• What was issued, to whom, and on what date
• What is overdue, grouped by party
• Revisions that quietly superseded an open item

It will never, without asking

• Never issue, reissue or transmit a document.
• Never chase a party directly. Drafts go to the user.
• Never mark anything as approved. Approval is a recorded act in the project’s own system.

You get back

• Themes, and how many separate projects hit each one
• The lessons recurring across three projects or more
• Where the same recommendation keeps being made

It will never, without asking

• Never attribute a lesson to a named individual. Lessons attach to projects and processes.
• Never state a cause the source material does not state.
• Never rewrite a recommendation into something stronger than what was written.

You get back

• Every open question, with who owes the answer
• Which ones are actually blocking work
• Overdue items with no stated impact

It will never, without asking

• Never answer a query on anyone’s behalf, and never draft a technical answer. This tracks; it does not opine on design, method or compliance.
• Never chase externally. Drafts go to the user.
• Never infer what a query blocks.

You get back

• What changed on the account since last time
• Open commitments, both yours and theirs
• Who went quiet, and the questions still open

It will never, without asking

• Never contact the customer. Drafts only, and only when asked.
• Never produce a health score, a risk rating or a close probability.
• Never share internal commentary about the account externally, and never include internal pricing discussion in anything drafted to the customer.

You get back

• What they raised, quoted and linked
• What you owe them, and what is still unanswered
• Items carried over from last time, marked and counted

It will never, without asking

• Never assess, rate, or characterise the person. No performance language, no sentiment read, no “seems disengaged”.
• Never read 1:1 notes about this person written by someone else.
• Never draft feedback, and never prepare anything for a performance process.

You get back

• A card per task, each with a named owner
• How you will know each task is actually finished
• The whole set saved to a file, so it survives the chat

It will never, without asking

• Plans only. Never create tasks in Planner or To Do, never send anything, never book time.
• Never assign a named person who has not already been associated with this work in the evidence.
• Never state a date as agreed unless the evidence shows it was agreed.

You get back

• One document: the three things that need you this week
• A section per report and per workstream, plus your calendar
• A run report saying which parts worked and which failed

It will never, without asking

• Inherits every boundary of the skills it calls, and may not relax any of them.
• Never send, post, create or schedule anything. It assembles.
• Never fill a degraded section with its own analysis. Degraded means thinner, not invented.