deal-next-step

name	deal-next-step
description	Pull the full context on any Attio deal — stage, linked contacts, notes, open tasks — then diagnose where it's stuck and recommend the exact next action with a drafted message or talking points. Interactive review loop: Mitch approves, edits, or redirects before anything writes back to Attio. Supports --all-active for full pipeline review with a triage table first, --bulk-approve to fast-path obvious actions (overdue tasks, proposal follow-ups) without reviewing each deal individually, and --export to generate all deal briefs to a file. Use during weekly pipeline review, before calls, or when a deal has gone quiet. Triggers: deal review, pipeline review, next step, deal stuck, what should I do with this deal, follow up on deal, pre-call prep.
version	0.2.0
maturity	draft
triggers	["deal review","pipeline review","deal next step","what should I do with this deal","deal is stuck","follow up on deal","pre-call prep","deal diagnosis","review my deals","prep for sales call","what's next with","advance deal"]

Skill: deal-next-step

Pull the full deal context, diagnose the situation, recommend the next move, draft the outreach. Mitch reviews before anything writes back to Attio.

---

When to Use

• Weekly pipeline review — run through every active deal, confirm next actions are real
• Stuck deals — deal has been in the same stage too long, last activity was weeks ago
• Pre-call prep — pull everything said so far, generate talking points for the next meeting
• After a new note or reply lands — re-evaluate what the deal needs now

---

Inputs

One of the following is required. Everything else is pulled from Attio.

Input	Type	Notes
deal_identifier	string	Deal name, linked contact email, or Attio deal record ID. The most specific identifier you have.
--all-active	flag	Skip identifier. Run the skill across all deals not in Won or Lost. Used for full pipeline review sessions.
--bulk-approve	flag	Used with --all-active. Fast-path obvious actions (overdue tasks, proposal follow-ups older than 5d, unanswered questions) without per-deal review. Flags complex actions (new proposals, re-engagement) for individual review.
--export	flag	Generate all deal briefs and recommendations to temp/scratch/pipeline-review-YYYY-MM-DD.md. No Attio writes. No EmailBison calls. Use for pre-meeting prep or async review.
--stage <name>	string	Filter --all-active to a specific pipeline stage (e.g. "Proposal Sent", "Discovery"). Useful when you only want to work one stage of the funnel.

---

What Claude Does

Step 1 — Resolve the deal record

If a deal record ID is provided directly, skip search.

If a name is provided:

attio deals search "<deal_name>" --json --limit 5

If a contact email is provided, find the person first, then pull their linked deals:

attio people search "<email>" --json --limit 3
# Get PERSON_ID from response, then:
attio records list deals --filter '{"linked_record": {"target_object": "people", "target_record_id": "<PERSON_ID>"}}' --json

If multiple deals match, list them and ask Mitch to confirm which one before proceeding.

Extract data.id.record_id — this is DEAL_ID.

---

Step 2 — Pull the full deal record

attio records get deals <DEAL_ID> --json

Extract and store:

• deal_name — the deal's display name
• stage — current pipeline stage (e.g., "Discovery", "Proposal Sent", "Negotiation")
• value — deal value if set
• linked_contacts — array of linked person record IDs
• linked_company — linked company record ID if set

---

Step 3 — Pull linked contact details

For each person in linked_contacts (usually one, occasionally two):

attio records get people <PERSON_ID> --json

Extract: name, email, job title, company name.

If a company is linked to the deal:

attio records get companies <COMPANY_ID> --json

Extract: company name, domain, industry if available.

---

Step 4 — Pull all notes on the deal

attio notes list --parent-object deals --parent-record-id <DEAL_ID> --json

Sort notes by created_at descending (most recent first). Read the full content of each note. Notes contain call summaries, email history, context from previous interactions.

Also pull notes on the linked person record to catch context logged there:

attio notes list --parent-object people --parent-record-id <PERSON_ID> --json

---

Step 5 — Pull open tasks linked to the deal

attio tasks list --not-completed --linked-object deals --linked-record-id <DEAL_ID> --json

Note any tasks that are overdue (deadline in the past). These signal dropped follow-ups.

---

Step 6 — Load LeadGrow context

Before diagnosis, load the following context files. These define what good looks like and what LeadGrow can offer.

leadgrow-hq/company/voice-guide.md      — tone and writing rules for all outreach
leadgrow-hq/company/ICP.md              — who we target, what their pain looks like
leadgrow-hq/company/offerings.md        — what we sell, how we position it

Do not summarize these. Read them in full. They are the benchmark for the diagnosis and draft.

---

Step 7 — Diagnose the deal

Analyze the deal state across four dimensions:

1. Time in stage Calculate days_inactive from the most recent note timestamp instead — days_inactive = today - most_recent_note.created_at. Attio v2 does not expose stage_entered_at as a standard record attribute. Use note history as the proxy for stage engagement. Flag deals where days_inactive exceeds the thresholds below:

• Discovery: days_inactive > 7 with no next call scheduled
• Proposal Sent: days_inactive > 5 with no response noted
• Negotiation: days_inactive > 10 with no update
• Any stage: days_inactive > 21

2. Last activity Find the most recent note across deal + person records. Calculate days since that note. If last activity > 14 days: deal is cold. If > 30 days: deal is likely dead — say so.

3. What's been discussed Read all notes and extract:

• The prospect's stated pain (what they told us is broken)
• Their stated timeline or urgency signals ("Q2 starts May 1", "need results by summer")
• Objections or friction points raised ("not sure about budget", "want to think it over")
• Commitments made on either side ("I'll send the case study", "they'll loop in their VP")
• Anything left unresolved or unanswered

4. What's missing or blocking Identify the specific gap preventing the deal from advancing:

• Missing information from the prospect (decision-maker name, budget, timeline)
• LeadGrow deliverable not yet sent (proposal, case study, sequence sample)
• Waiting on a decision with no agreed deadline
• Overdue task that was never actioned
• No next meeting scheduled

---

Step 8 — Recommend the next action

Based on the diagnosis, recommend one specific next action. Do not give a list of options. Pick the right move.

Use the recommendation logic below to decide.

Draft the outreach or talking points for that action. See Drafting Rules.

---

Step 9 — Present for review

Display the deal brief and recommendation to Mitch. Wait for his input before any write operation.

See Review Interface for the display format.

---

Step 10 — Execute on approval

Once Mitch approves (with or without edits):

1. Create a task in Attio with the next action and a deadline
2. If the message is approved for sending: queue it in EmailBison
3. If Mitch wants to update the deal stage: run the stage update command
4. Confirm what was written back to Attio

---

Recommendation Logic

Work through these in order. The first one that applies is the correct recommendation.

Condition	Recommended Action
Overdue task exists on the deal	Action the overdue task first. Name it explicitly.
Commitment was made by LeadGrow and not fulfilled	Fulfill it. Draft the deliverable or the message sending it.
Prospect asked a question in the last note that was never answered	Answer it. Draft the response.
Proposal was sent > 5 days ago with no reply	Follow up on the proposal. Draft a short check-in.
Discovery call happened, no proposal sent	Recommend sending proposal. Draft it or flag that generate-proposal skill should run.
First touch made, no call scheduled	Recommend booking the discovery call. Draft the scheduling message.
Last activity > 14 days, deal in active stage	Soft re-engagement. Draft a reason-to-reach-out message.
Last activity > 30 days, no urgency signals	Flag the deal as likely cold. Recommend a final bump or closing it out.
Deal is in Negotiation with no timeline	Recommend creating a mutual action plan. Draft a "here's what next 2 weeks look like" message.
Deal is in Won or Lost	Don't recommend an outreach action. Recommend archiving or requesting a case study (Won) or logging the loss reason (Lost).

When no condition applies cleanly: read the last note and draft whatever the natural next human response to it would be.

---

Drafting Rules

All outreach drafts must follow the LeadGrow voice guide. Non-negotiable rules:

• No dashes of any kind — no em-dash (—), no double-hyphen (--). Use periods or short sentences instead.
• Lead with their situation, not ours. Open with something specific to them from the notes.
• Short. 4-6 sentences for a follow-up. 8-10 for a re-engagement. Never longer unless it is a proposal or a formal response to a multi-part question.
• One ask. End with exactly one clear request (a yes/no question, a specific meeting time, a decision point). Never two asks in one message.
• No fluff openers. Never start with "Hope you're well", "Just checking in", or "Following up on my last email."
• Reference specifics. Use their name, their company name, something from the notes. Generic messages read as mass emails.
• Match the context. If the deal is warm and recent: direct. If it's been 3 weeks: acknowledge the gap, give them a reason to reply.

For talking points (pre-call prep): bullet format is fine. 3-5 key points Mitch should hit, 2-3 questions to ask, any objections to expect based on the notes.

---

Pipeline Review Mode (--all-active)

When --all-active is set, Claude pulls all active deals before starting any review.

Phase 1 — Triage table

Before generating any per-deal briefs, run a rapid triage across all active deals. Display a summary table:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
PIPELINE TRIAGE — 8 active deals
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
  #   Deal               Stage            Days   Last      Action Type
  ─   ─────────────────  ───────────────  ─────  ────────  ─────────────────────────
  1   Acme Corp          Proposal Sent    8d     8d ago    🔴 Overdue task: follow up on proposal
  2   Boundless          Discovery        3d     3d ago    🟡 No next call scheduled
  3   Storylane          Negotiation      15d    15d ago   🔴 No mutual action plan, no timeline
  4   Tensorlake         Proposal Sent    2d     2d ago    ✅ Recently sent. Monitor.
  5   Teachaid           Discovery        1d     1d ago    ✅ Call yesterday. Task exists.
  6   Aurium             Interested       30d    30d ago   🔴 Cold. Final bump or close out.
  7   Vercel deal        Proposal Sent    5d     5d ago    🟡 Proposal follow-up due
  8   Findem             Discovery        7d     12d ago   🟡 No call after first touch
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🔴 = needs action now  🟡 = monitor/follow-up  ✅ = no action needed

Process options:
  [a] Review all deals (default)
  [b] Bulk approve all 🔴 actions, skip ✅, review 🟡 individually
  [s] Select deals by number (e.g. "1,3,6")
  [x] Export full pipeline brief to file — no actions taken
> _

This triage table is generated from the data already pulled (deal stage + last note timestamp + open tasks). It does NOT require full note analysis for all deals — that happens per-deal as Claude works through them.

Phase 2 — Per-deal review

After triage, process each deal using the Review Interface below.

---

Bulk Approve Mode (--bulk-approve with --all-active)

When --bulk-approve is active, Claude fast-paths actions that match well-defined patterns without requiring per-deal review.

Auto-approved action types (no review needed):

• Overdue task on the deal → extend task deadline + log note
• Proposal sent >5 days ago, no reply → generate and queue follow-up
• Unanswered question from prospect in last note → generate and queue answer

Flagged for individual review:

• Deal cold for 30+ days (final bump or close-out decision)
• No proposal sent yet after discovery (generate-proposal is a bigger action)
• Deal is in Negotiation (too nuanced for auto-approve)
• Deal linked to multiple contacts (message routing is ambiguous)

After generating all auto-approved actions:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
BULK APPROVE SUMMARY — 8 deals analyzed
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
AUTO-APPROVE (3):
  • Acme Corp — follow up on proposal (8d overdue)
  • Storylane — proposal follow-up (sent 6d ago, no reply)
  • Vercel deal — proposal check-in (5d no response)

NEEDS REVIEW (2):
  • Aurium — cold 30d, final bump or close-out?
  • Findem — no call after first touch (7d) — schedule discovery?

NO ACTION (3):
  • Tensorlake, Teachaid, Boundless — active, no action needed
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Confirm auto-approve 3 actions? (y/n) _

On y: Execute auto-approve batch (tasks + EmailBison queue), then enter interactive review for the 2 flagged deals.

---

Export Mode (--export)

Generate a full pipeline brief to:

C:/Users/mitch/Everything_CC/temp/scratch/pipeline-review-YYYY-MM-DD.md

File format:

# Pipeline Review — 2026-04-01
Generated: 8 deals | Active only (excl. Won/Lost)

---

## 1. Acme Corp — NEEDS ACTION
**Stage:** Proposal Sent (8 days)  **Contact:** Sarah Chen ([e-mail])
**Last activity:** 8 days ago

**Situation:** Proposal sent March 24. No reply. One overdue task: "Follow up on proposal" (due March 27).
**Recommendation:** Follow up on proposal — reference their Q1 close timing from the discovery call.

**Draft:**
Subject: Re: Acme proposal

Sarah,

Wanted to check if you had a chance to look over what we put together.
Q2 starts in a few weeks — if the timing works, I'd want to get you onboarded before the window closes.

Worth 20 minutes this week to go through any questions?

— Mitch

---

## 2. Boundless — MONITOR
...

Print file path. Nothing sends. No Attio writes.

---

Review Interface

Claude displays this before asking for input:

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
DEAL: <deal_name>
Company: <company_name>   Contact: <name> (<email>)
Stage: <stage>   Last activity: <N> days ago
Value: <value or "not set">
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

SITUATION SUMMARY
<2-4 sentence summary of where the deal is and how it got here.
Based strictly on the notes. No invented context.>

WHAT'S BEEN DISCUSSED
<Bulleted extract: key pain points, signals, objections, open questions, commitments>

BLOCKERS
<Specific gap preventing the deal from advancing. One clear sentence.>

DIAGNOSIS
<One sentence: what this deal actually needs right now.>

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
RECOMMENDED NEXT ACTION
<Action verb + what to send/do + by when>

DRAFT
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
<The email, message, or talking points. Full draft. Ready to use or edit.>
─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

What do you want to do?

  [a] Approve — create task + queue message as-is
  [e] Edit draft — paste your version, then approve
  [d] Different action — tell me what you want instead
  [s] Stage update only — advance the stage without sending
  [skip] Skip this deal for now

Wait for input. Do not proceed until Mitch responds.

---

User Actions

[a] Approve

Create the task and (if a message is part of the action) queue it in EmailBison.

# Create task linked to the deal
attio tasks create \
  --content "<recommended_action>" \
  --deadline "<ISO_8601_deadline>" \
  --linked-record '{"target_object": "deals", "target_record_id": "<DEAL_ID>"}' \
  --json

If sending a message via EmailBison, route through the outbound:queue-message skill. Do not call EmailBison directly from this skill.

[e] Edit draft

Mitch pastes the edited version. Claude confirms the edit is captured, then runs the same approve flow with the edited text.

[d] Different action

Mitch states what he actually wants to do. Claude drafts for that action and presents a new review block. Do not loop more than twice — if Mitch redirects twice, just ask him to specify the exact text to use.

[s] Stage update only

attio records update deals <DEAL_ID> \
  --values '{"stage": "<new_stage>"}' \
  --json

Confirm the update. No task creation unless Mitch requests it.

[skip]

Log nothing. Move to the next deal (in pipeline review mode) or exit (in single-deal mode).

---

Output

On completion of each deal, print a summary line:

Dealt — <deal_name>: <action taken>
  Task: "<task_content>" due <deadline>  [task_id]
  Message: queued in EmailBison  [or "not sent"]
  Stage: <updated_stage>  [or "unchanged"]

In pipeline review mode (--all-active), print a session summary at the end:

PIPELINE REVIEW COMPLETE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
<N> deals reviewed
<N> tasks created
<N> messages queued
<N> deals flagged as cold
<N> skipped

---

Context Files to Load

Load these before Step 7 (Diagnosis). Read in full.

File	Why
leadgrow-hq/company/voice-guide.md	Draft outreach in Mitchell's voice. Non-negotiable.
leadgrow-hq/company/ICP.md	Understand what good-fit pain looks like. Helps calibrate urgency and blockers.
leadgrow-hq/company/offerings.md	Know what we can offer at each stage. Needed if recommending a proposal or scoping a follow-up.

---

CLI Commands Used

Command	Purpose
attio deals search "<name>" --json --limit 5	Find deal by name
attio people search "<email>" --json --limit 3	Find person by email to resolve linked deals
attio records list deals --filter <json> --json	List deals linked to a person
attio records get deals <DEAL_ID> --json	Pull full deal record
attio records get people <PERSON_ID> --json	Pull linked contact details
attio records get companies <COMPANY_ID> --json	Pull linked company details
attio notes list --parent-object deals --parent-record-id <id> --json	All notes on the deal
attio notes list --parent-object people --parent-record-id <id> --json	Notes on the linked person
attio tasks list --not-completed --linked-object deals --linked-record-id <DEAL_ID> --json	Open tasks linked to the deal
attio tasks create --content <text> --deadline <iso8601> --linked-record <json> --json	Create next-action task
attio records update deals <DEAL_ID> --values <json> --json	Update deal stage

---

AI Role

Clear division of labor:

Responsibility	Claude	CLI
Resolve deal from name or email	Yes (decides which command to run)	No
Filter tasks to target deal (client-side)	Yes	No
Read notes and synthesize situation	Yes	No
Apply recommendation logic	Yes	No
Draft outreach in LeadGrow voice	Yes	No
Display review interface and wait for input	Yes	No
Convert natural language deadlines to ISO 8601	Yes	No
Execute all API writes (tasks, stage updates)	No	Yes
Handle auth, retries, rate limiting	No	Yes
Route messages to EmailBison	Delegates to outbound:queue-message skill	No

---

Example Invocation

Single deal — by contact email

User: "What's next with the Storylane deal?"

Claude: Searches for deals linked to storylane.io or the known contact email.
Pulls deal record, notes, open tasks.
Loads voice + ICP + offerings.
Diagnoses: Proposal was sent 8 days ago. No reply. One open task (overdue by 3 days): "Follow up on proposal."
Recommends: Follow up on proposal with a specific hook from the discovery call notes.
Drafts the message.
Presents review interface.
Mitch: [a]
Claude: Creates task "Follow up on proposal — 2026-04-03" linked to Storylane deal. Queues message.
Prints: Dealt — Storylane: task created + message queued.

Pipeline review — all active deals

User: "Let's do the pipeline review."

Claude: Runs attio records list deals (all non-Won, non-Lost) --json.
Works through each deal one at a time.
For each: pulls notes, tasks, diagnoses, recommends, presents review block.
Mitch approves, edits, or skips each.
After all deals: prints session summary.

Pre-call prep — talking points only

User: "Prep me for my call with Tensorlake at 2pm."

Claude: Pulls Tensorlake deal record and all notes.
Diagnosis: They asked about our reporting cadence and wanted a sample report. That was 5 days ago and never sent.
Recommendation: Bring a sample report to the call. Cover their reporting question directly. Push for a decision or a scoped trial.
Draft: 5 talking points + 3 questions to ask + 2 objections to expect.
No task is created unless Mitch approves post-call.

---

Error Handling

Scenario	Behavior
No deal found for identifier	Surface the exact search used, return zero-results message, ask for a more specific identifier. Do not guess.
Multiple deals match the identifier	List all matches (name, stage, contact) and ask Mitch to pick one.
Deal has no notes	Flag it. Diagnosis proceeds with "no prior history" noted. Recommendation defaults to "schedule discovery call" or "make first contact" depending on stage.
Deal is Won or Lost	State the outcome and do not recommend outreach. Offer: log a loss reason (Lost) or request a case study (Won).
Voice guide or offerings file missing	Halt and report the missing file path. Do not draft without the voice guide.
attio tasks create fails	Log the error and the task content. Ask Mitch if he wants to retry or note it manually. Do not silently skip.
Stage update fails	Surface the error. The task may still be created. Report both outcomes separately.