Key people → memory/people/
Render the progress bar (Step 3/6 · Key people). Map the principal's whole orbit, not just their team. Walk each circle explicitly and capture every person with the same detail — role, your relationship, cadence, how to work with them, what they care about, sensitivities — one file per person, each tagged with a relationship: value (see brain/schemas/memory-file.md):
- Manager (up) — who they report to →
relationship: manager. - Skip-level up — the boss's boss; often a sponsor or escalation path →
relationship: skip-up. - Peers — same level, especially cross-functional peers they depend on →
relationship: peer. - Direct reports — their team →
relationship: direct. - Skip-level down — their directs' reports; the broader team beneath them (get the key ones) →
relationship: skip-down. - Cross-org — important internal people in other functions (exec sponsors, partner-team leads, the CFO…), even with no reporting line →
relationship: cross-org. - External — customers, partners, investors, board, advisors →
relationship: external.
Walk the circles a turn at a time — never as one list of questions. The bullets above are what to capture, not a menu to read out. people is a single checklist row, so "One topic per turn" won't stop you asking all seven at once — and all seven at once earns one shrug for all seven. Go up, then down, then across, letting each answer shape the next.
Don't stop at the immediate team — deliberately go up, skip-up, sideways, down, skip-down, and across. Link people to projects with markdown links (relative paths).
By mode: work-manager — the full orbit above, emphasizing direct reports and skip-down (the team they run) plus cross-org stakeholders. work-IC — they have few/no reports; emphasize their manager, skip-up, and the close peers/collaborators they depend on, plus a few key cross-org people — don't dwell on a downward org. personal — map family, close friends, and key advisors/providers (doctor, accountant, lawyer, contractor…); use natural relationship: labels (family / friend / advisor / provider) rather than the work orbit.
Recommend an upload here: "Got an org chart? Drop a screenshot and I'll map out your people." A team roster works too. Extract each person into their own file (tagged), then show the principal the map you built — grouped by circle — for confirmation.
Bootstrap from the calendar if a connector is on. Don't make the principal recall everyone cold. If the step-2 fast-track bootstrap already ran, this step is mostly confirming/extending that draft — review the people it saved (and any people-related hypotheses) and fill gaps. Otherwise, scan the last ~1 month of every connected calendar for frequent attendees and standing 1:1s — honor the bootstrap_scope recorded at step 2 (work-only → scan only work calendars; named → only the accounts they chose; all → everything); if none was recorded because no bootstrap ran, default to work calendars, or disclose scope in one line before scanning personal ("I'll skim your work calendars for this — want me to include personal too?"). In personal mode, keep it account-neutral instead — honor any recorded scope, else scan all the calendars you've connected or ask account-neutrally ("I'll look across your calendars for this — all of them, or just the ones you name?"); never default to a near-empty work-only scan. Use that to draft the people map: pre-fill likely names, a guessed relationship: (a recurring 1:1 → probably a direct or their manager; a weekly group → peers/team), and the cadence you observed. Then walk them through confirming or correcting it — capture only what they confirm. (No calendar connector → just ask, as above.)
Checklist: people → done once every circle has been walked — a circle they have nobody in is a one-word answer, not a skip.