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Away Brief skill

Give the owner one page when they come back from sleep, a meeting or a long run: what got done, what is stuck, what waits for their answer, and what it cost in quota. Use when the owner asks what happened while they were away, wants a status page, or when you finish a long stretch of work and must report it.

$npx skills add sno-ai/sno-station-skills --skill away-brief
View this skill on GitHubsno-ai/sno-station-skills/skills/H-reporting-and-visibility/away-brief/skill/SKILL.md
Pack stars
864
Pack installs
1
Alyn Score
42/99
Updated
6 days ago
License
Apache-2.0
– views – installs via Alyn

Install Away Brief

Pick your agent. Every command is ready to paste.

$npx skills add sno-ai/sno-station-skills --skill away-brief

The open skills CLI detects your agents (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and 70+ more) and installs to the right folder. Add -g to install globally.

01

Install it

Run the command above, or upload the folder in Claude.

02

Ask naturally

Describe the task. Your agent loads away-brief when the request matches its description.

03

Name it if needed

If it does not trigger, say “use the away-brief skill”. In Codex, type $away-brief.

The skill itself

SKILL.md

FolderGitHub

away-brief

sno away-brief run reads what already exists and prints one page of at most 60 lines. It changes nothing except its own list of quota readings, and Reach, which may note that it has seen the cards that the inbox read listed (it never moves, accepts or finishes them).

## Done       new commits, charters delivered since the cutoff (with how many checks are proven),
              progress records that finished or are still going
## Stuck      charters not finished (with the numbers of the checks not yet proven), progress records
              with tasks left that nobody has touched for two hours
## Needs you  Reach cards of type question or decision waiting in the inbox
## Spend      your heartbeats, and each vendor's quota now with the change since the last reading

A source it cannot read prints not read: <what> -> <why> and the rest of the page still prints. Each section has its own share of the 60 lines; items beyond it are replaced by an and N more not shown line, so a long Done list never pushes out what waits for the owner or the quota.

Prerequisites: bash 4+, GNU coreutils, git and jq. It uses sno deliver-proof (the deliver skill) to count proofs, sno reach inbox, sno heartbeat --list and sno subscription-quota-check when they are installed.

Use

  1. Run sno away-brief run --since 12h in the project's git folder. Change --since to the time the owner left (8h, 2d, or a date). Add --repo DIR for each other repository and --charters DIR for folders that hold charters or progress records outside those repositories. Add --as <your seat> (or set SNO_REACH_ADDR) so the inbox is read.
  2. Read the page and tell the owner the three things that matter most, in plain words: what is finished, what is blocked and why, and what needs their answer. Keep the page's evidence paths so they can open the file. Do not add work that is not on the page.
  3. Quota: a reading shows usage now, not spend. When the owner is about to leave, run sno away-brief mark once; it stores a reading, so the next page can show what was spent since. Without an earlier reading the page says so instead of guessing.

What the page can and cannot say

  • "Done" is only what is in git, in a delivered charter, or in a finished progress record. Work that was never committed or recorded does not appear.
  • "Stuck" is a charter whose recorded proofs are missing or failing, or a progress record (written by sno handoff-checkpoint) with tasks left and no update for two hours. An agent that is busy but does not write records looks quiet.
  • "Needs you" is only the seat you name. Questions sent to other seats are not shown.
  • The change in quota compares two readings of the same window; if the window reset in between, the page says so instead of showing a negative number.

Tips for Away Brief

  • • Start a fresh session after installing so your agent picks up the new skill.
  • • This skill ships scripts. Read them before the first run, and run it in a project without secrets first.
  • • It is part of a pack with 21 skills. Install only the ones you need with --skill to keep triggers precise.
  • • If two skills overlap, mention the one you want by name.

Questions about Away Brief

What does the Away Brief skill do?

Give the owner one page when they come back from sleep, a meeting or a long run: what got done, what is stuck, what waits for their answer, and what it cost in quota. Use when the owner asks what happened while they were away, wants a status page, or when you finish a long stretch of work and must report it.

How do I install Away Brief?

Run "npx skills add sno-ai/sno-station-skills --skill away-brief" in your project. The skills CLI installs it for Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and 70+ other agents. In Claude on the web, upload the skill folder as a ZIP under Customize > Skills.

Does Away Brief work in Cursor and Codex?

Yes. Away Brief uses the open SKILL.md format, so it works in Claude Code, Claude, Cursor, OpenAI Codex, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot and other agents that support agent skills.

Is Away Brief free?

Away Brief is open source on GitHub under the Apache-2.0 license. It is free to install; check the license before commercial use.

Who made Away Brief?

Away Brief is published by sno-ai in the sno-ai/sno-station-skills repository, together with 20 other skills.

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