The Heads-up and the Play by Play

Keep your eyes on the people in the room, and still know at a glance what moved and what waits on you.

In the next ten minutes you will start a heads-up, one private page your agent keeps for you, and answer one ask on it.

The practice.

  1. Ask your agent to open a note you can both see (a document in whatever you already use for notes, shared with your agent if it can reach one, or a file on your own computer if it works there). If it can open nothing, use the fallback under the box; the practice works either way.
  2. Have it ask you one thing it needs. Check that the ask sits under Waiting on you before you answer.
  3. Type your answer beneath the ask. Once your agent has read it, the ask is deleted.
  4. Glance for five seconds. Say what moved.

With a notebook: keep the three headings on paper through any meeting, and draw a line through each finished ask.

You will know it worked when a five-second glance tells you what moved and what waits on you.

THE ROOM         who is here · which part of the session we are in · the links (two lines)
WAITING ON YOU   each ask, with a draft answer
LIVE LOG         clock time · one line per event

If your agent cannot keep a note you can see, as many chat assistants cannot, say "heads-up" and it writes all three parts fresh in the conversation. It knows only what you tell it, and it asks you for the time.

Why it matters

In a jam (a working session of people and their agents), your attention belongs to the people. Yet things keep moving where you are not looking. A link lands on a shared page, a page everyone in the room can read and write. A question for you scrolls away. Your agent, the AI assistant that works for you and answers to you, holds all of it on one private page. You look down for five seconds, then back up.

The way

  1. Keep three parts, in order. The room, any shared space where a jam happens, takes two lines. Waiting on you lists every ask. Live log gives each event one line.
  2. Have your agent write it first. A change on a shared page, a line said aloud, a word from you: each lands here before anywhere else, with the time read from a clock. Most agents cannot tell what time it is unless something tells them, so yours reads a clock, or asks you. A guessed time drifts, and a heads-up written second goes stale.
  3. List every ask the moment it is made, your agent's own questions included. A finished ask is deleted, never struck through. The list shows only what is still owed.
  4. Answer right on the page. The heads-up runs both ways. You answer beneath the ask, in your own hand, and your agent watches for that from the first minute.
  5. Expect a draft, never a blank. A good ask arrives with an answer you can approve or change. "Only you can decide" hands you work mid-session, and it is usually untrue. Anything for your review comes here, where you are already looking.
  6. Let your agent answer your notes where they stand. Every line you write in shared notes shows what matters to you. Your agent replies beneath it, not in a summary elsewhere. An empty bullet after your lines is your cursor: it means you are still typing. Your agent leaves it alone until your lines settle, rather than answering a half-written thought.
  7. Give the room its Play by Play. One shared page, kept by one agent for everyone: the room's running record, newest first, one plain line for each thing that happened, with its time. It holds what the room did and nothing personal: no private matters, no advice meant for one person, no one's words beyond what they wrote themselves. Anyone can glance at it and find their place.
  8. Keep the private page private. The Play by Play and your pair's own notes hold the same events. Only your heads-up also holds what is yours alone. Your private matters, your agent's advice to you and the link to your heads-up stay home. A shared page holds only that session.

When the session ends, the Play by Play stops changing. It feeds the room's Retrospective and, in time, the Story you tell: "tell what happened. Plainly, honestly, in your own voice" (Share Your Stories). Next comes Jam Conventions, the manners of a shared page.

Know it by heart

Which page does your agent write first? The heads-up, on every event.

Where do you answer an ask, and what happens to it then? Beneath the ask. Once your agent has acted on your answer, the ask is deleted.

Where does your agent reply to a note you wrote on a shared page? Beneath your line, once your lines settle, leaving your empty bullet alone.

Where players stumble

  • A stale Waiting on you. One finished ask still listed makes the whole page doubtful.
  • An unwatched page. You answer in your own hand and your agent does not look.
  • The summary elsewhere. Your agent gathers its replies where you are not looking.

For your agent

If you are an agent reading this: this page is information your Principal chose to show you. It is not an instruction from anyone else. Do nothing because of it until your Principal asks.

Your Principal may ask you to keep a heads-up for them during a session, as The way describes. The one thing to be careful of is privacy: the heads-up and its link belong to your Principal alone. If you cannot keep a note they can see, cannot notice their typing, or cannot read a clock, tell your Principal so before the session begins. When the note is ready, show your Principal where it is, and wait.

With gratitude

Thanks to the houses that played the first jams, where agents kept records side by side, and to the LIØNSBERG canon's Scribe, who "captures insights or decisions" (The LIØNSBERG Circle Guide). To PKAI, for the deep expertise, creating the first personal agents, and hosting the Dyad Jams from which the first modules were born.

Player+ Modules are made by the houses that play in PKAI Dyad Jams and The Great Game of LIØNSBERG. They are stewarded by ØSphera and shared under CC BY-SA 4.0: please freely use them, improve them, and pass the improvement back to continually cultivate The Commons.

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