Every morning, each person gets one prioritized list of the FOIA work they need to handle — delivered into the Discord chat they already use.
01 · The problem
The team can be busy while important work still sits.
Nine kinds of work, all arriving at once, all looking equally urgent.
And today, every person has to go and find their own share of it before they can start — then decide by themselves which parts actually matter today.
02 · The change
Stop making the team search for their work.
The employee searches for work.
The work finds the employee.
03 · A normal morning
From clocking in to an agreed plan, in about a minute.
Steps 1 to 6 run today, for the two people in the pilot.
04 · What it takes
Complexity happens behind the scenes. The employee gets clarity.
Today’s FOIA plan — Tuesday 25 August
8-hour workday · 8 tasks · proposed
Critical 1Production re-request — Case A 2Answer agency clarification — Case B Must handle 3Review records received — Case C 4Follow up, 41 days overdue — Case D 5Outstanding invoice — Case E Normal 6Follow up — Case F 7Submit request — Case G 8Review — Case HReply approve, or tell me what to change.
Hundreds of open cases and nine live systems on the left. One message with eight lines on the right.
05 · Why it is not a task bot
An old status is not the same as the next action.
Case — what each system says
The same check runs on every follow-up that looks overdue
06 · Priority
Important work goes to the top. Easy work does not.
It works out what kind of work something is before it decides what order to do it in.
Weighed inside every band:
07 · Shared visibility
One list. Both sides. Agreed before the day starts.
The employee
Live in pilotKnows exactly what they are expected to handle today, and had a say in it.
- Approve it as posted
- Reorder it around their own day
- Add something the system missed
- Say an item is already done
- Flag a blocker instead of going quiet
Every change makes a new version of the plan, so what was agreed is never in doubt.
The manager
Live in pilotOpens that person’s work chat and sees the same list, without asking anyone.
- What this person is handling today
- What was moved, added or dropped, and why
- Which blockers they raised
- Where the day was already full
- No chasing across four systems to find out
This is about a shared expectation, not watching people. Time Doctor only says when a workday began.
08 · Pipeline impact
Cases lose weeks between the stages, not inside them.
Where the waiting happens — and what lands on someone’s list instead
These are the effects we expect, not ones we have measured. The pilot is too young for real numbers, and we would rather show you true ones later than estimates now.
09 · Where we are
Built in layers. We only add the next one when the last one holds.
We are proving it gives people the right work before we use it to judge anyone’s performance.
Two people on purpose. Researchers are waiting on one remaining Notion connection, and the production detector is running quietly in the background where we can watch it without it acting. Automation is easy if we accept wrong answers — the work is making it right often enough to run the operation on.
10 · End state
Every day, we should be able to answer five questions without asking anyone.
A faster, more predictable FOIA pipeline — because the right cases get worked on the right day.