The method

Clarify

Decide what a capture is and whether it is a commitment. The agent proposes, the person decides.

Clarify turns a capture into a decision. It produces a task with a status, or a record that the capture asks nothing of you. The capture itself never changes: clarifying creates a new record that points back to it.

How to do it

Ask these questions in order. The first answer that settles it wins.

1. What is it, really? Put it in your own words. “Email from Ana re: Q3” is a pointer, not a meaning. “Ana needs the Q3 numbers before the board meeting” is a meaning.
2. Does it ask anything of me?
   • No, and it has no value: discarded.
   • No, but it is worth keeping: reference.
   • Not now, but maybe later: incubated. It is not a commitment, and you will reconsider it at review.
3. Is it one action or an outcome? If finishing it takes more than one step, it is an outcome: a task of kind project. An outcome carries no work of its own. Its steps are separate tasks that block it, and at least one of them is a next action.
4. What holds it? This is the status:
   • Nothing, and you could start the next step now: active.
   • A person or an event outside your control: waiting, with a wait naming who or what.
   • A date, and it needs no attention before then: calendar, with a wait carrying the date.
   • A specific impediment you have to remove: blocked. If the impediment is another task, a blocks edge says so.

Every status, and which moves between them are allowed, is in the vocabulary.

Then give it a title. A title is read far more often than it is written, mostly by agents, and mostly without the capture it came from. Name the outcome or the next physical action:

• Good: “Reproduce the EU currency bug with a test account.”
• Good, for an outcome: “EU invoices render in EUR.”
• Bad: “Currency thing.” “Look into invoices.” “Ana email.”

The person

• Answer by number. You don’t have to handle every item. Whatever you don’t answer stays in the inbox, and that costs nothing.
• Correct the proposal rather than rewriting it. “3, but it’s waiting on Bruno” is enough.
• Watch for over-commitment. An agent that proposes active for everything is drafting a to-do list nobody could finish. Most things are incubated, reference or someone else’s.

The agent’s side is the protocol: GTF-L1 to GTF-L4.

Failure modes

• Auto-triage. An agent that triages the inbox without asking has made every commitment on that list for you (P3).
• Everything active. The ready set turns into noise and get-next stops meaning anything.
• An outcome with no next action. A project that nothing blocks is a wish. Name its first step, or mark it incubated.
• Clarifying by editing the capture. The capture stays verbatim. What you understood goes on the task.

In Flow

Triage is the only way out of the inbox. It creates the task, marks the capture as triaged, and links the two for good. Calling it again on the same capture returns the task it already made, so triaging twice is not a second decision.

Example: Capture now, decide later triages one capture into a commitment and another into discarded, and shows the capture staying as it arrived.