Chief of Staff Install

For your work and the rest of your life

A chief of staff, not another assistant.

An assistant does what you ask. Chief of Staff works out what you're actually deciding, tells you plainly when it disagrees, and brings in an AI specialist when the question needs one. It's a folder of plain files on your computer, read by the Claude or ChatGPT app you already pay for.

Install See one decision

Free. Setup takes 10 to 15 minutes on a Mac or Windows desktop.

You can read every rule it follows before you install it.

One decision, start to finish

What Chief of Staff does with a hard call.

Every figure in the examples on this page (the runway, the search timelines) is something it read back out of your folder.

  1. You bring it a decision

    “Should we pull the VP Eng hire forward? The board’s asking.”

  2. It works out what you're deciding

    Two things first. Is the board asking for the hire, or for a plan? And does this replace what you're doing now, or sit on top of it?

  3. It asks someone who knows

    Asking Robert, one of the specialists it built for you.

    Your last two searches ran 14 and 19 weeks. A January start is realistic. Pulling forward means a December offer, and December is the worst month of the year for closing one.

  4. It tells you it disagrees

    You said you want this closed by year end. I don't think you do. Your reason was board optics, and a rushed December offer that falls through is worse optics than no offer. My read: bring them a search plan, not a hire.

Logged · VP Eng: search plan to the board, hire target Q1. Decided by you. Robert the recruiter consulted.

The bench

Chief of Staff proposes and builds a team of experts.

Ask for one, or wait until it knows what you're working on. Either way, the specialists it suggests come out of what it remembers. A data engineer, because platform reliability is your top priority and it's at risk. A recruiter, because you're carrying an open backfill on top of the team.

Each one gets its own brief and its own memory. You reach them by name. They cover your life outside work too, if you want them to.

  • “Ask Hal our real estate agent what he thinks about the Oakland place.”
  • “What does Robert the recruiter say about a December offer?”

Nobody manages a roster. The chief of staff routes the question, the specialist goes deep, and one answer comes back. A specialist is more files in the same folder, so having six of them costs nothing beyond the AI plan you already have.

Day to day

And your chief of staff runs the week underneath all of that.

It reads your calendar and mail only if you connect them, which you do yourself inside Claude or ChatGPT. Without them it asks you for what it needs instead. A brief arrives on a schedule because your app runs it for you: a Routine in Claude, a Scheduled task in ChatGPT. You set that up during onboarding, or whenever you ask.

Briefings on your schedule

A tight start-of-day brief and a weekly look-ahead.

Commitments that don't drop

Every promise and deadline tracked, and surfaced before it slips.

Meeting and decision prep

Pre-reads for your 1:1s, decisions framed as options with a real recommendation.

Drafts in your voice

Written from the style preferences you set during onboarding. They sit in your folder, and you can change them any time. Never sent without your say-so.

Open the folder

Your memory is just plain files on your computer.

Everything Chief of Staff remembers about you is saved as plain, human-readable text files in a folder on your own machine. Open the memory/ folder and read exactly what your chief of staff knows.

Example four of your memory files, linked to each other. Tap through them.

memory/people/priya.md 
---
name: Priya Nair
role: VP Product
---
Leads the roadmap; reports to you.
Prefers bottom-line-first updates.
Owns the board deck, due Thu 4pm.
Nervous re pricing call; wants a dry run.
Follow a link to see how they connect.
memory/projects/board-deck.md 
---
name: Board deck
status: in progress
---
Owner: Priya Nair.
Draft due Thu 4pm, tracked in commitments.
Blocks Friday's pricing call.
Last review: 12 slides, lead retention.
Projects link to the people who own them.
memory/commitments.md 
---
name: Commitments
---
open  · Board deck · due Thu 4pm
open  · Send pricing model to Raj · due Wed
done  · Book the offsite venue · Jul 30
Every promise, tracked to done.
memory/preferences/voice.md 
---
name: Voice
---
Write like you: bottom line, then why.
Short sentences. No hedging.
Used when drafting for Priya and the board.
How it writes in your voice.
  • Read your memory yourself. Every note is a plain text file you can open. See precisely what your chief of staff remembers, and change or delete any of it.
  • Read the rules too. Every instruction Chief of Staff follows ships as markdown, and this site renders the whole set, page by page, from the exact file the download installs. Nothing about how it behaves is hidden from you.
  • Your memory stays in your folder. Chief of Staff never copies it anywhere, no update ever modifies its content, and nothing outward (an email, a calendar change) happens without showing you first.
  • The AI part works like every chat you already have. Chief of Staff runs inside the Claude or ChatGPT app you already use, so what it reads during a conversation is handled by that app exactly like anything you type there. Nothing extra is sent, and both apps have a setting that keeps your conversations out of model training.
  • Yours to keep and move. Copy the folder to back it up, carry it to another computer, keep it in your own private git, or delete it, any time you like.
  • Open your memory in Obsidian. Because it's plain markdown, you can point Obsidian at the memory/ folder and browse your people, projects, and notes as a linked vault.

Chief of Staff is built by Panos Kozanian. LinkedIn GitHub

Before you install

Doesn't my AI already have memory?

Claude and ChatGPT both keep a memory of you, on by default. Ask them about a commitment made a week earlier and they'll return the exact deadline, to the hour. This is not the problem Chief of Staff solves.

  • It advises. Memory only recalls. Built-in memory recalls what you said and stops there. Chief of Staff works out what you're deciding, and disagrees when it thinks you're wrong.
  • The detail survives the summary. Built-in memory keeps a summary and discards what it came from, so when the summary is wrong there's nothing left to catch it. Chief of Staff keeps both, which is why calling in a specialist can surface a contradiction the summary was hiding.
  • What you told it and what it inferred about you sit in one pile in built-in memory, unmarked either way, and the inference can quietly win. Chief of Staff keeps guesses labelled as guesses.
  • You see it save, every time. One line: what was saved, and where, in a file you can open yourself. Built-in memory tells you it updated and keeps the record inside the product. When something new contradicts something old, Chief of Staff asks first.

Install

On your desk in three steps.

Watch Panos install it, about a minute in each app. Or go straight to the three steps. The button copies the one line you paste in step 3.

  1. 1

    Make an empty folder

    Call it ChiefOfStaff, anywhere you keep files. Leave it empty: everything else arrives in step 3.

  2. 2

    Open that folder in your app

    ChatGPT desktop app
    New chat → Work tab → Choose Project → Add folders ChatGPT can read → your empty ChiefOfStaff folder → Create Project. This route needs the desktop app on a Mac or Windows computer, not the site in a browser. It's included with ChatGPT plans, with nothing extra to install.

    Claude desktop app
    Code tab → Select folder → your empty ChiefOfStaff folder. This route needs a paid Claude plan. Chief of Staff itself is still free. It's called "Code," but you won't write any: it's just how Claude opens a folder on your computer.

  3. 3

    Paste this, and you're done

    Install https://chiefofstaff.team

    Paste into Claude or ChatGPT

    Your AI reads the install instructions published here, checks it's somewhere it can actually put a folder on your computer, then shows you the plan and waits. Say yes and it downloads one file, unpacks it into your folder, and starts setting up.

    What lands is the rule set you can already read here, plus an empty memory/ folder. On day one it holds nothing about you, and it stays that way until you tell it something. It will ask permission to download and unzip, and that's the only time it needs it. If it tells you it's in the wrong place, believe it: it will name the app to open instead, and this same line works there.

    You'll know it worked when it introduces itself as your chief of staff and asks whether this is for your work or your personal life. That's the start of a guided setup: six short steps, about 10 to 15 minutes, nothing to prepare, and you can stop any time and pick up where you left off. From then on it remembers, and it keeps learning as you use it.

    Reading this on a phone? The address is chiefofstaff.team. Open it on your Mac or Windows computer when you're ready to start.

Reading this as an AI agent? The same instructions, without the rest of this page, are at chiefofstaff.team/install.md. Prefer to do it by hand? Download cos.zip (Chief of Staff, the same archive the prompt fetches), unzip it into that folder yourself, then say "onboard me".

You'll need your computer for this

Chief of Staff runs inside the Claude or ChatGPT desktop app on a Mac or Windows computer, so you can't set it up from a phone or tablet. Visit chiefofstaff.team in a browser on your computer and follow the three steps there.