# HQ, a Claude skill

Most of us end up with several Claude sessions open at once and no session that holds the whole board. HQ is the one that does: it's the session that orchestrates the others. It holds the tracker, decides what runs next, writes the paste-and-go prompt for it, reviews what comes back before anything ships, and closes out the day. You still do every bit of the actual work; HQ just stops you from being the only thing tracking where it all stands.

This is the free version of the skill, generalized from the real one I run my own days on. Every client name, colleague, and repo URL is gone. The mechanics that make it work stay: the lane structure, the dispatch and review loop, the approval gate, the close-out ritual, and the pace rules.

## What's inside

- `SKILL.md`: the skill itself. This is the file Claude reads.
- `references/prompt-shapes.md`: twelve prompt skeletons for the situations that come up most, from a read-only brief to a rollback to a known version.
- `references/environment.md`: a template for the environment facts that decide which surface handles what. Ships empty of my own facts; fill in your own as you learn them.
- `references/tracker.md`: how the task tracker (`the-list.jsx`) is structured and rebuilt.
- `assets/the-list.jsx`: the tracker itself, a single-file React artifact with one example card per lane. Open it in Claude and it renders as a working board.
- `assets/the-list.blank.jsx`: the same tracker with nothing but one placeholder card per section, for starting completely empty instead of adapting the example cards.

## How to install

**Claude Code:** drop the whole `hq` folder into `~/.claude/skills/`. Restart Claude Code and the skill is live.

**claude.ai:** create a Project, then upload `SKILL.md` and everything in `references/` to the Project's knowledge. Reference the skill by name in chat, or just say "HQ."

## Getting started

1. Read through `SKILL.md` once and rename the lanes in the Lanes section to match your own life. The shipped set (client, business, builds, home, family, career, content) is a starting shape, not a requirement.
2. Open `assets/the-list.jsx` (or `assets/the-list.blank.jsx` if you'd rather start from nothing) in a Claude chat that can render artifacts. It renders as a working board.
3. Say "HQ," attach the list, and hand it whatever's actually open across your other sessions. Replace the placeholder cards with your own the first time you rebuild.
4. As you hit real environment facts (which tools block what, which accounts have which connectors), write them into your own copy of `references/environment.md`. That file is the one piece of this skill that only gets useful once you've lived with it a while.

No signup, no catch. If it's useful, tell me: oliviakeiter.com.

— Olivia