Standup generator

Pulls Claude Code activity for the current project, reconciles it with the past week of standups, and writes a corporate-grade morning standup that does not read like AI generated it.

When to run

Trigger phrases (not exhaustive): standup, morning standup, daily standup, EOD notes, weekly recap, "what did I do yesterday", "summarize my last week", "status update for the team".

If the user gives no window, default to yesterday. If they say "last week", interpret as the last 7 calendar days inclusive of today. If they give a specific date or range, honor it.

Pipeline (run in order)

1. Collect raw activity

Run the collection script from the user's current working directory. Pass exactly one window flag.

python3 ~/.claude/skills/standup/scripts/collect.py [WINDOW_FLAGS]

Window flag mapping:

• "yesterday" / no window given → --yesterday
• "today" → --today
• specific date like "2026-04-30" or "April 30" → --day 2026-04-30
• "last 3 days" / "past week" → --last N (week = 7)
• "from X to Y" → --from YYYY-MM-DD --to YYYY-MM-DD

The script prints structured markdown with sessions and turns. Read the output. If it prints "No conversations found", stop and tell the user, do not fabricate activity.

2. Read prior standups for carry-forward

ls -1 .standups/ 2>/dev/null | sort | tail -n 7

For each of the last up to 7 standup files in .standups/, read it and extract:

• Items under ## Open questions or ## Pending or ## Blockers
• Anything tagged "carrying from" or "still open"

Hold these as candidate carry-forwards. The script output from step 1 will tell you which ones got resolved (look for explicit closure signals: PR merged, decision made, question answered) and which are still hanging. Be conservative. If a question was open yesterday and today's activity does not mention it, assume it is still open and carry it forward with the original date stamp.

3. Synthesize bullets

Produce 3 to 5 bullets total, not more. Mix of these slots, in this priority order:

1. Shipped (yesterday's most material delivery, the headline)
2. In flight (today's planned focus, only if obvious from the conversation)
3. Blocker / open question (the thing the team needs to know)
4. Decision or alignment (only if a real decision was made or sought)
5. Risk flagged (only if something concrete needs attention)

Use the corporate bluff vocabulary at references/corporate-bluff.md for translation. The point of the bluff is defensible vagueness, not lying. Every bullet must map back to something that actually happened in the JSONL. If a bullet cannot be defended in a question from a manager, drop it.

4. Anti-AI pass (mandatory)

Before writing the file, scrub the bullets for AI tells. The full rule set lives at references/anti-ai-rules.md. The non-negotiables:

• Zero em dashes (—). None. Use a comma, a period, or a regular dash with spaces.
• Zero "—" character anywhere in the output, including in lists or section breaks.
• No "delve", "leverage", "robust", "seamless", "comprehensive", "ensure", "facilitate", "in the realm of", "in today's fast-paced", "it's worth noting", "moreover", "furthermore".
• No "rule of three" parallels (e.g. "fast, scalable, and reliable"). Pick one.
• No "not just X but Y" constructions.
• No -ing summary clauses at the end of a bullet ("...landing the migration, paving the way for...").
• No vague attributions ("studies show", "experts agree", "best practices suggest").
• No bold-italic emphasis on emotionally loaded words for drama.

If a bullet violates any of the above, rewrite it. Do a second pass if needed.

5. Build the output file

Use the template at references/template.md. Fill in:

• Date header (the end of the window, or "today" if today)
• The 3-5 bullets
• A short "Carrying forward" section if any items survived from prior standups
• A short "Resolved this cycle" section if today's activity closed any prior open items
• An "Open questions" section listing what is still unresolved as of this standup

6. Write and gitignore

Write to .standups/YYYY-MM-DD.md where the date is the standup's effective date.

• If .standups/ does not exist, create it.
• Check .gitignore. If .standups/ is not listed, append it on its own line. If .gitignore does not exist, create it with .standups/ as the first line.
• Do not commit anything. The user controls git.

After writing, print the bullets to chat in plain text so the user can copy-paste into Slack or wherever, with no markdown formatting (no -, no *, no bullets), one item per line. Most standup channels render markdown poorly; raw lines paste cleanly.

Hard rules

• Never invent activity. If yesterday had no real progress, say so. The user's preference is direct over polished.
• Never use em dashes anywhere. This is a global ban for this skill, including in carry-forward sections, in chat output, and in file content.
• Never write "AI-flavored" qualifiers like "leveraging", "thoughtfully", "carefully crafted", "elegant solution".
• Always run the collection script. Do not synthesize from memory of the conversation, even if you remember it. The JSONL is the source of truth.
• Never write a standup file longer than 30 lines. Standups are not reports.
• Never reformat or edit prior standup files. They are append-only history.

What good looks like

A bullet that is good:

Landed the HMM regime detector OOS backtest at 14.1% CAGR. Numbers held under the 2014-2026 window. Moving the options layer spec to v3.0 today.

A bullet that is bad (AI-flavored, vague, em dash, rule of three):

Successfully delivered a robust, scalable, and reliable HMM regime detection system — a critical milestone enabling the next phase of our journey.

If the output reads like the second one, redo it.