The morning brief: one message instead of ten

The list of a hundred tasks for Hermes has one side effect. People enthusiastically set up eight of them, and the next morning they get the weather at 7:00, the calendar at 7:05, the euro exchange rate at 7:10, promises at 7:15 and disk status at 7:20. On day three they mute it. On day five they read nothing, including the one message that mattered.

The morning brief is the fix for that mistake. One message, always at the same time, always with the same structure.

The one-minute rule

You should be able to read the brief in a minute, standing up. That's roughly 150 words. Everything else follows from that: if something doesn't fit, it doesn't belong.

A useful test: imagine someone reading it out to you in the doorway. At which sentence would you say “that'll do, thanks”?

A structure that works

Four sections in a fixed order. The order matters more than the content, because after a week you only read the first two and skim the rest.

How to ask for it

Don't create four tasks and then try to join them up. Create one and describe the result:

Every working day at 6:45, send me a morning brief. Rules:

- 150 words at most, no introduction, no sign-off.
- Sections in this order: ON FIRE, TODAY, WHAT CHANGED, and one
  sentence about the weather. Leave out any section with no content.
- ON FIRE: promises from the database that are overdue or due today,
  three at most, oldest first.
- TODAY: meetings from the calendar with time and place.
- WHAT CHANGED: only what's new since yesterday's brief.
- If there's nothing to report in any section, just write:
  “All quiet today.” and the weather.
- Don't evaluate anything, don't recommend anything unless I ask.

The last line looks strict. Without it, the model adds a paragraph of well-meant advice every morning and the brief doubles in length.

Save it as a skill

After three days of tuning, tell the agent to save the procedure (/learn). From then on the structure is written down in a file and the scheduled task simply loads it. Why that's better than a long prompt inside the task itself, and how to check a skill, is explained in the part on agent skills.

The practical upshot: when you want to change the brief, you edit one file. And a weekend version can use the same skill with a different prompt.

What doesn't belong in the brief

• World news. It's endless and breaks the one-minute rule on day one. If you want it, have it sent separately, at a different hour.
• A motivational line. The agent will happily write one, differently each time. It's noise.
• Everything that hasn't changed. You don't want to read “disks OK” three hundred days a year. You want to read only about the day they aren't.
• Decisions made for you. “I recommend moving the meeting” doesn't belong in an overview. Facts yes, advice on request.

The third one is the rule that saves the most: report exceptions, not status. For watchdog tasks that need no model, Hermes has a dedicated mode — a script that prints nothing sends nothing. The brief then mentions only what the script reported.

The evening twin

The morning brief tells you what's ahead. The evening one has a different job: closing the day. It tends to be even shorter.

Every working day at 17:30: what from this morning's ON FIRE is still
open, what new things I promised today, and the first thing for
tomorrow. 80 words at most.

Most people find that one of the two is enough. Try both for a week and keep the one you read.

What it costs

One task a day is cheaper than ten, because the agent loads its source material once. Still, watch your spending in the first week: a brief that reaches into mail, the calendar and a database reads more text than you'd expect. The spending cap on the key, as described in the part on OpenRouter, applies here too.

The monthly cut

Once a month, ask yourself which section you haven't read in the past fortnight. Delete it. A brief that never loses anything eventually grows to a length where you stop reading the whole thing — and then you're back where you started.

What to watch out for

• Delivery time. Send it ten minutes before you get up, not an hour before. A message buried under overnight notifications gets lost.
• Weekends are different. A work brief on Saturday morning is the fastest way to start hating it.
• Sensitive things in Telegram. A chat with a bot isn't end-to-end encrypted. The brief should say “doctor's appointment at 10”, not the diagnosis.
• If the brief doesn't arrive, something has gone wrong. That's exactly why even an empty day gets its one sentence. Silence then means a fault, not a quiet day.

You can tell a good brief by the fact that you missed it after a holiday. A bad one by the fact that you never noticed it was gone.