"Sorry, can't make it — can you represent me?" usually transmits a vibe and a prayer. Then your representative gets asked the one question you didn't cover, guesses, and you spend Thursday unwinding it. A clone brief is what should have gone instead of you: your positions with their reasoning, your fallbacks in order, the red lines that end the conversation, what you'd happily trade — and the explicit boundary of what your representative may agree to versus must bring back. One page, readable in two minutes by a colleague, and structured enough that an agent could carry it too. In a world of A2A meetings, this is the artifact that attends.
What This Skill Produces
- The clone brief: context in three lines, then stances / fallbacks / red lines / tradables / delegation boundary, each with the why attached
- A 60-second verbal version for briefing the carrier in the corridor
- A question-anticipation table: the questions likely to come up, with your answers — including the honest "I haven't decided; here's my leaning"
- A debrief ask: the 3 things you want reported back
Required Inputs
Ask for (if not already provided):
- The meeting: decision at stake, who's in the room, what they each want (as far as known)
- Your position and — this is the load-bearing part — why; the reasoning is what lets a representative handle the unanticipated
- What you'd accept as fallback, what's tradable, what's a walk-away
- Who carries the brief (peer? report? someone from another team? an agent?) and how much you trust their judgment on this topic
Process
- Compress context ruthlessly. Three lines: what's being decided, why it matters to you, where the tension is. The carrier has two minutes; history lessons stay home.
- Ladder the positions. For each issue at stake: IDEAL (open with this) → ACCEPTABLE (agree without checking) → BRING BACK (don't agree; capture and return) → RED LINE (say no in the room, with the scripted sentence to say). Attach one-line reasoning to each rung — reasoning is what travels; conclusions alone can't handle follow-ups.
- Name the tradables. What you'd concede happily and what you want in exchange — a representative who knows your currency can negotiate; one who only knows your demands can only repeat them.
- Draw the delegation boundary explicitly. The sentence that prevents the Thursday unwind: "You may commit up to X; beyond that, 'I'll take it back to [name] by [time]' — that sentence is always a win, never a failure."
- Anticipate the questions. The 3–6 things the room will ask, answered. Where you're genuinely undecided, say so with your leaning — a representative bluffing certainty in your name is worse than one honestly deferring.
- Script the debrief. Three asks: what was decided · what was said about [the thing you care about] · what surprised you. Anything more won't be remembered.
Output Format
# Clone brief: [meeting] — [date] · carried by [name]
## Context (3 lines)
## Position ladder
| Issue | Ideal | Acceptable | Bring back | Red line (+ the sentence) | Why |
## Tradables
[Give happily ↔ want in return]
## Your authority
[May commit up to … · beyond that, the take-it-back sentence]
## They'll probably ask
| Question | Your answer (or honest leaning) |
## Report back
[The three asks]
— 60-second corridor version —
[Spoken: the one decision, your one must, your one flexible, the boundary]
Quality Checks
- Every ladder rung carries reasoning — the brief works when the unanticipated happens, or it doesn't work
- The red-line sentence is scripted verbatim, sayable by someone who isn't you
- The delegation boundary is a number or a named scope, not "use judgment"
- At least one they'll-ask answer is an honest "undecided, leaning X" — a brief with total certainty on everything is posturing
- The whole brief fits one page; the corridor version speaks in 60 seconds
Anti-Patterns
- Do not send conclusions without reasoning — that's instructions for a puppet, and puppets fail on question two
- Do not hide the real red line to seem flexible; the carrier discovers it by crossing it, in public, as you
- Do not skip the authority boundary — its absence is how "represent me" becomes "apparently I agreed to a June deadline"
- Do not write it agent-readable but human-hostile: the colleague is the primary reader; structure serves both
Related
[[delegation-brief]] hands off ongoing WORK; this hands off a POSITION for a single room. [[stakeholder-influence-mapper]] for reading the room you're sending it into; [[the-understudy]] for the deeper version of "represent me."