what-to-change

name	what-to-change
description	The flagship "what should I change in my business now" routine. Trigger on "what should I change", "what to change in my business", "what's the most important thing to fix", "monthly review", "where should I focus this month", or "what needs to change now". Returns exactly three ranked changes, each gated on a dated citation you can open, in a plain-language urgent/important matrix. It reads only from a deterministic candidate gatherer that excludes parked, paused, and resolved items, so it never manufactures urgency from a stale or already-decided item. If fewer than three changes have real dated signal, it says so rather than padding. Closes by proposing one concrete skill improvement for you to approve, never auto-editing.
why	An OS that sits unused is dead weight. This is the routine that earns its keep: it checks the real dated signal in your brain layer and tells you the three things worth changing now, with the receipts. The hard part is honesty - the documented failure is false urgency, so the candidate gate and parked filter are mechanical, not a promise.
enhance	Run it monthly, or whenever you feel busy but unsure what matters. The more honestly your flags and log carry dates and parked markers, the sharper the three changes get.
allowed-tools	["Bash","Read"]
mcp_requirements	[]

What to change

Runs on: local-exec - runs the candidate gatherer script and reads its output; on a surface that cannot run a script, read the brain files directly and apply the same parked/dated rules by hand, and say you did.

The routine that tells the founder the three things worth changing in their business right now, each backed by a dated source they can open. It exists to beat the one failure that kills this kind of routine: false urgency from a parked or already-handled item.

Pre-flight

• If core/identity.md does not exist, stop with: Founder OS not set up here. Run /founder-os:setup first.
• If scripts/what-to-change.py does not exist, stop with: Routine helper not found. Run /founder-os:update to install it.

Procedure

1. Gather candidates (mechanical). Run python scripts/what-to-change.py gather. This returns JSON: as_of, within_days, parked_excluded, count, and signals. Each signal carries source, anchor, date, age_days, kind, and title.

   • The gatherer has ALREADY excluded parked, paused, and resolved flags and anything named in brain/decisions-parked.md. Do NOT add candidates from your own reading of the brain files. The gatherer's signal list is the ONLY candidate pool. This is the guard against false urgency - respect it.

2. Honesty gates on the count.

   • count == 0: say plainly "No change has real dated signal in the last within_days days. Nothing to surface this period." Then stop. Do not invent work.
   • count < 3: present only what qualifies, and say so in literal words, for example "Only two changes have real signal this period; here they are." Do NOT pad to three.
   • count >= 3: pick the three highest-signal changes (most recent, decay-passed, or highest flag severity).

3. Verify each citation resolves. For each change you surface, build its citation [source: <source>#<anchor>] from the signal and confirm it with python scripts/what-to-change.py resolve <source>#<anchor>. If a citation does not resolve, drop that change - never surface an unresolvable source.