"Here's the folder — get up to speed and tell me what matters" is a real task with a bad default: reading everything start-to-finish, drowning evenly, and producing a summary of documents instead of an answer to questions. The pile discipline inverts it: define the brief's questions first (what does the reader need to decide or understand?), map the pile cheaply (what each doc is, its date, its likely contribution — the repo-map philosophy applied to documents), read against the questions (deep where they're answered, skim where they're not), reconcile the disagreements between documents (piles always disagree — dates usually explain it), and keep the provenance trail, because a brief that can't say "per the Q3 postmortem" gets re-derived by the first skeptic.
What This Skill Produces
- The pile map — every document: what it is, date, author-context, and its likely contribution to the questions
- The extraction — findings organized by the brief's questions (never by source document), each with its citation
- The reconciliation — where documents conflict: the resolution (usually recency or authority) or the honest open question
- The brief + the honesty ledger — the deliverable, plus what was skimmed/skipped and what the pile simply doesn't contain
Required Inputs
Ask for these if not provided:
- The pile — the documents (or their contents); the map works on what's actually there
- The reader and their questions — who is this for and what must they decide/understand ("the new lead needs: state of the project, open risks, why past decisions were made") — without questions, the output is a book report
- The pile's history, if known — why these documents accumulated, which are drafts vs. finals (doc-versioning-discipline status often missing — the map infers and flags)
- The deadline and depth — an afternoon's brief reads differently than a week's; the map allocates reading time by expected contribution
Framework: The Pile Rules
- Questions before reading: the brief's 3–5 questions get written first — they convert reading from absorption into search, and they're the only defense against the pile's own emphasis (piles over-represent whatever got documented most, which is rarely what matters most).
- Map cheaply, then allocate: ten minutes of skimming headers/dates/intros produces the map; reading time then allocates by expected contribution — the two load-bearing docs get real reads, the six status updates get scans, the duplicates get one representative. Even coverage is the pile's trap.
- Extract to questions with citations: every finding files under a question with its source pinned ("risk: the vendor contract auto-renews in Sept [Contract-notes.doc, p2]") — the citation trail is what makes the brief checkable, and checkable briefs end debates that summarized ones start (citation-hygiene internal rules).
- Reconcile conflicts explicitly: piles disagree — the deck says launch in Q2, the memo says Q3. Resolution order: recency (was the older superseded?) → authority (whose call was it?) → if unresolvable, the conflict is a finding ("sources disagree on the launch date; the latest signal is Q3 [memo, June] but no decision record exists"). Silent averaging of conflicts is how briefs launder confusion into false confidence.
- The honesty ledger closes it: what was read deeply, skimmed, skipped (with reasons), and — most valuable — what the questions needed that the pile doesn't contain ("nothing documents why vendor B was rejected — recommend asking [person]"). The gaps are findings; the session-handoff stranger-test applies: the reader should never need to ask what the ledger should have said.
Output Format
Brief: [pile] → for [reader] — their questions: [list]The Pile Map
| Doc | What it is | Date | Contribution | Read depth |
|---|
The Brief (by question)
Q1: […] — [findings with citations] Q2: […] — […] [Conflicts: the reconciliation or the open-question finding]
The Honesty Ledger
[Read/skimmed/skipped · what the pile doesn't contain · the ask-a-human list]
Quality Checks
- The questions were written before the reading started
- Reading depth followed the map's contribution estimates
- Every finding carries its document citation
- Conflicts were reconciled by stated logic or reported as findings
- The ledger names the gaps and the skips honestly
Anti-Patterns
- Do not read evenly — the pile's volume distribution is not its importance distribution
- Do not organize the brief by document — the reader has questions, not a filing fetish
- Do not average conflicting sources — reconcile or report; blend is betrayal
- Do not cite nothing — an uncited brief is one skeptic away from being re-done
- Do not hide what wasn't read — the ledger converts a limitation into a map for the reader