what-so-what-now-what

name	what-so-what-now-what
description	Use this skill to structure a message as What / So What / Now What — state the fact, explain the impact, recommend the action. Best for post-mortems, retros, incident reviews, status updates, debriefs, and any "here's what happened and what we should do" moment. Triggers on "what so what now what", "structure this post-mortem / retro / incident review / status update", "help me debrief <X>", "what's the takeaway and action", or "run this post-mortem cleanly". Turns raw observations into a crisp fact → impact → action arc.
version	1.0.0
user-invocable	true

What / So What / Now What — Fact, Impact, Action

The Borton/Rolfe reflective model. Three questions, asked in order, turn a pile of observations into a decision. It keeps debriefs from drifting into blame or rambling: separate what happened from what it means from what we do next, and each stays clean.

   WHAT            →     SO WHAT           →     NOW WHAT
   the fact              the impact              the action
   (observe)            (interpret)             (decide)
   neutral, specific     why it matters          concrete next step

The Three Moves

1. What — the fact. What happened, observed neutrally and specifically. Data, events, the observable record. No interpretation and no blame yet — just the ground truth everyone can agree on.
2. So What — the impact. Why it matters. The consequences, the meaning, the significance. What did this cost / risk / reveal? This is the analysis layer — connect the fact to something the audience cares about.
3. Now What — the action. The concrete recommendation or next step. Specific, owned, and time-bound where possible. This is the payoff; a debrief without a "Now What" is just a complaint.

When to use it (and when not)

Use it for: post-mortems and incident reviews, sprint retros, project debriefs, status updates, research/experiment readouts, performance conversations, "lessons learned" write-ups.

Reach for something else when: you're pitching or selling (→ storybrand, abt), inspiring on vision (→ golden-circle), or presenting a decision to a board (→ pyramid-principle, which leads with the recommendation rather than building to it). This frame is for reflection that produces action.

How to build it

1. Separate the layers ruthlessly. Keep opinion out of "What" and keep facts from re-litigating in "Now What". Mixing them is what makes debriefs go sideways.
2. Make "What" blameless and specific. "The deploy at 14:02 dropped the checkout service for 18 minutes," not "someone broke prod."
3. Make "So What" quantify impact where you can — cost, users affected, risk, what it exposed.
4. Make "Now What" an owned action, not a vague intention. "X will add a deploy check by Friday," not "we should be more careful."
5. Repeat the trio per finding for a multi-point review; keep each self-contained.

Worked example

Raw material: a checkout outage after a deploy, caused by an untested config change.

As What / So What / Now What:

What: At 14:02 a config change was deployed that pointed checkout at the wrong payment endpoint. Checkout returned errors for 18 minutes until we rolled back. So What: ~1,200 customers hit a failed checkout; we estimate ~$14k in abandoned carts and a spike in support tickets. It also revealed that config changes bypass our staging tests entirely. Now What: (1) Priya adds config changes to the staging test gate by Friday. (2) We add a checkout smoke test to the deploy pipeline this sprint. (3) Rollback runbook gets linked in the deploy channel today.

Facts everyone accepts, an impact that's quantified, and actions with owners — no blame, all signal.

Quality bar / common mistakes

• Interpretation smuggled into "What". If a reader could disagree with your "What", it's not a fact yet — move the opinion to "So What".
• Stopping at "So What". Analysis with no action is the most common failure. Always land the "Now What".
• Vague "Now What". "We should improve testing" isn't an action. Name who, what, and by when.
• Blame instead of system. Good debriefs fix the system, not the person. Keep "What" neutral.

Compose

• Have the story-drafter agent draft in this framework (the storytelling skill uses it for parallel comparison).
• Audit an existing draft with the story-critic agent, targeting what-so-what-now-what.
• Not sure this is the right frame? Start from the storytelling skill and let it recommend.