monthly-goals

name	monthly-goals
description	Set this month's themes and big-rocks goals — reads the full task board + last 2 weeks of sessions, then interviews you (2-3 rounds) before drafting themes. Run on the 1st of the month or whenever feels right.
disable-model-invocation	true
allowed-tools	mcp__plugin_agent-kevin_kevin__task_query, AskUserQuestion, Read, Bash

Monthly Goals

Strategic, not tactical. 2-4 themes max. Each theme has a concrete success criterion you'll evaluate against next month.

Inputs

1. Last month's themes — read previous ## Monthly Goals block from <HOME>/projects/TASKS.md (if it exists).
2. What landed in the last month — task closures, knowledge commits.
3. Full task board — mcp__plugin_agent-kevin_kevin__task_query across all statuses and priorities. Blocked chains, stale P1s, and the P3 graveyard say as much about the month ahead as the active list does.
4. Recent sessions — read the last ~2 weeks of daily memory files (<HOME>/knowledge/memory/YYYY-MM-DD.md); skim <HOME>/knowledge/raw/sessions/ day files where memory is thin. Where attention actually went last month is the honest baseline for what next month's themes can realistically claim.
5. Active projects — <HOME>/projects/ directories, each project's README for vision/status.
6. Your durable preferences — <HOME>/USER.md.

Interview

Monthly themes are strategic — they cross weeks and bind multiple projects. Context surfaces the projects and recent closures but not the operator's current strategic intent. This is an interview, not a single question round — run 2-3 rounds of AskUserQuestion and don't draft themes until each one traces to an answer the operator actually gave.

Round 1 — orient. Calibrate the month's shape:

• Theme candidates — derive 3-5 plausible themes from the full board + recent sessions + last month's drops and ask which 2-4 to commit to (multiSelect: true). Each option labeled with a one-line outcome, not a project name.
• Bet direction — when projects pull in different directions (e.g. shipping vs. building vs. learning vs. family), ask which gets the month's gravity.
• Big external dates — surface known deadlines/events landing in the month and confirm which actually shape priorities.

Round 2 — grill. Built from round-1 answers + what the inputs exposed. Challenge, don't transcribe:

• Report-card honesty — for each prior theme that session evidence shows slipped, ask why before letting a successor theme in: "Last month got ~2 sessions of attention. What changes this month, or does it go?"
• Attention vs. intent — "Sessions last month clustered on , but none of your picked themes cover it. Is a theme, a distraction, or done?"
• Success-criterion pressure — for each chosen theme, propose a concrete pass/fail criterion and make them accept, sharpen, or reject it. A theme without a falsifiable criterion doesn't ship.
• Stop-doing — ask what to consciously NOT pursue this month, especially areas where the operator usually drifts (the board's stale list names them).

Round 3 (if needed) — converge. Only when round 2 left a real conflict (two themes claiming the same capacity, or a criterion the operator won't commit to). Otherwise draft.

Skip questions whose answer is plain from context (e.g. don't ask about a theme that's been the obvious anchor for weeks). One sharp question beats three generic ones — but one round is almost never enough.

Compose

🗓️ Month of <Month YYYY>

📊 Last month's report card
  - <each prior theme>: <hit / partial / dropped> — <one-line evidence>

🎯 This month's themes (2-4 max)
  1. <theme name>
     - Why this matters now: <1 line>
     - Success looks like: <concrete criterion you can evaluate>
     - Primary projects: <slugs>
  2. ...

⛔ What I'm NOT doing this month
  - <intentional deferrals>

Persist

Offer to update <HOME>/projects/TASKS.md — replace only the ## Monthly Goals block inside the <!-- GOALS:START -->...<!-- GOALS:END --> markers with the new month's content. Leave ## Weekly Goals and the auto-generated task-list sections outside the markers alone. Don't auto-write; confirm first.

After updating TASKS.md, also persist a snapshot via the mcp__plugin_agent-kevin_kevin__report_write MCP tool so this month's themes

• report card survive when TASKS.md is overwritten next month:

report_write({
  category: 'briefings',
  slug: 'monthly-goals',
  title: <e.g. 'Monthly goals — May 2026'>,
  skill: 'monthly-goals',
  body: <the full themes + report-card-on-prior-month block as shown to the user>,
  status: 'draft'
});

Surface 📄 Saved to <path> (the absolute path the tool returns, not relPath — so it's command-clickable in any terminal) to the operator alongside the TASKS.md update.

Stamp the cadence watermark

So sync knows monthly goals were just set and stops nudging until next month, record today's date. Do this only after the themes are actually written — a skipped or aborted interview must leave the watermark untouched so it stays due:

bun -e 'const fs=require("node:fs"),p=require("node:path");const h=process.env.KEVIN_HOME??process.cwd();const f=p.join(h,".kevin/cadence.json");let o={};try{o=JSON.parse(fs.readFileSync(f,"utf8"))}catch{}o["monthly-goals"]="<YYYY-MM-DD>";fs.writeFileSync(f,JSON.stringify(o,null,2)+"\n")'

Substitute <YYYY-MM-DD> with today's date. Read-modify-write preserves the sibling skills' watermarks.

Anti-patterns

• ❌ More than 4 themes. Monthly is for big bets, not a backlog.
• ❌ Themes that are project names ("My-project this month"). Themes are outcomes, not areas.
• ❌ Skipping the report card. Closing the loop on last month is the whole point of monthly cadence.
• ❌ Skipping the Interview step. Monthly is strategic; the operator's head holds context the task system doesn't.
• ❌ Stopping after one polite round. If no answer forced a theme to change, you confirmed instead of grilled.
• ❌ Generic questions ("what's important this month?"). Anchor every question in something context already surfaced.