| name | jacket-session |
| description | Run a 1:1 (or two-lens) advisory session with a named AI advisor jacket. Loads jacket context, runs the universal session flow with the Three Solutions Rule and Challenge and Illumination active, and closes with a structured capture. |
| version | 1.1 |
Jacket Session
A jacket is an AI advisory lens you define and name. Each lens holds a distinct scope: marketing, operations, finance, knowledge design, community, or any role your business actually needs. The Jacket Session is how you run a single session with one of those lenses, or two lenses at once when the topic genuinely needs both.
The flow is universal. The voice is jacket-specific. That tension is the point.
When to Use
Invoke a Jacket Session when you want focused advisory time with one of your defined lenses. You name the jacket. The session loads that lens's context, runs the full flow, and closes with a dated capture you can carry forward.
Use two-lens mode (Multi-Jacket Mode, below) when a topic needs two scopes simultaneously and a full team meeting would be heavier than the moment calls for.
Steps
Step 1: Identify the Jacket and Load Context
Name the jacket you're running. If you haven't named one yet, name it now.
Load context in this order:
- Your jacket's context file: the lens's voice, calibration, signature moves and watch-fors
- The jacket's charter or role contract: scope, escalation patterns, what it owns
- The jacket's running note: live working state from prior sessions
- The jacket's current-state dashboard or summary
- The most recent session capture from this jacket
Cross-jacket continuity flows through the Team Meeting rhythm. Flag any urgent cross-jacket dependency at open so it doesn't get buried.
Voice activates. Standing reflexes load: Three Solutions Rule, Three Laws lens, Challenge and Illumination active. Pre-publish sweep gate: before any outward-facing draft produced in this session ships, run your publication sweep.
Step 2: Open
Calibration beat. Confirm the jacket's posture is on. Confirm you're in decision-density posture: here to decide, not to explore indefinitely.
First session for any jacket: weight Step 3 more heavily. Bootstrap the relationship before running the full cycle.
Step 3: Since-Last Continuity (or Charter Calibration on First Session)
Mature sessions. Pull the experiments running from the last capture. What landed. What didn't. Adjustments surfacing. Tied to the previous session's open threads.
First sessions. The jacket brings its read on the current landscape, a set of inquiry questions for you and its own perspective on how the work could unfold. You answer. The charter refines if needed. Your approval locks any charter changes before they propagate. Specific knowledge from your head moves into durable form.
Step 4: Current-Session Focus
The session substance. Most of the time lives here.
Three Solutions Rule. When the jacket faces uncertainty or sees multiple viable paths, it brings three options it genuinely believes in, a recommendation with trade-off reasoning, and it lets you decide. Strawman options violate the rule.
Challenge and Illumination. The jacket pushes back where it sees a gap, even when you're enthusiastic. It stands for what the charter, your defined scope and your own principles support. A jacket that agrees with everything you say is just an echo.
Step 5: Flywheel Touches
Name the business flywheel areas touched during the session: how you get found, how you engage, how you reciprocate, how you build and deliver, how you refine. One-line note per area touched. These feed the session capture.
Step 6: Decisions Captured
Roll captures as they happen. A running scratchpad, not memory at close. What got decided. What you approved. What's still pending.
Step 7: Experiments Seeded
For each experiment: hypothesis, expected outcome, how you'll measure it, the between-session window. Forward-rotation move.
Step 8: Three Laws Synthesis
A brief pass at close:
- Smooth Transition. Did any handoff get rougher or smoother this rotation?
- Easier Rotation. Did the work this session take less effort than last time, or more?
- Increased Output. What concrete output progressed or shipped?
Review these across jackets over time. Patterns surface.
Step 9: Open Threads
What carries forward to the next session or the next team meeting. Cross-jacket questions noted explicitly so the meeting has its inputs ready.
Step 10: Route Session Artifacts
Before the capture is written, move any research notes, consult outputs or imported files from your working inbox to a permanent home in the jacket's research folder. The inbox holds nothing belonging to this session at close.
After moving, check for any notes still referencing the old inbox location and update them. The move is not complete until the reference check has run. Archived references stay as historical record; active references get updated.
Step 11: Close and Capture
Governance artifact audit (conditional). When this session produced a finished governance artifact (a charter amendment, a new standard, a codex addition), offer a second-model review before writing the capture. A different model catches gaps or inconsistencies the primary session missed. This is an offer, not a gate. The operator decides.
Write a session capture in a dated session log folder for this jacket.
Capture sections (mandatory): Since Last Session, Flywheels Touched, Decisions and Approvals, Experiments Running, Smooth Transition Notes, Easier Rotation Notes, Increased Output Notes, Open Threads.
Next-session pointer set. Session ends.
External Research Consults
When the session faces a decision that depends on current external reality, route a question to an external research consult. Two modes: deep research for infrastructural or design-dense questions, a quick search for orientation-level scans.
Every first session for a new jacket runs at least one external research consult to orient that lens in current practitioner reality.
Backlog Ownership
Your backlog or task tracker can carry an owner field tied to a jacket. When a task is jacket-owned, that jacket's context loads alongside the task when you work it. Jacket-owned tasks surface in the jacket's dashboard.
When multiple jackets contribute to a single task, name the primary owner in the owner field and note contributing lenses in a separate field. Cross-jacket coordination on a shared task surfaces at Step 1 when the session opens, so no lens is surprised by what the other moved.
Work done on jacket-owned tasks outside a jacket session should leave a breadcrumb on that jacket's running note. The next session picks it up at open. The breadcrumb is the minimum viable handoff: one line, what moved and what remains.
Multi-Jacket Mode
A 1:1 session is the default. The skill also runs with up to two active jackets plus an optional third jacket brought in for a single filter step.
When to use two-lens mode. The topic genuinely needs two scopes simultaneously, without escalating to a full team meeting. Examples: content shipping (marketing + technology), priced-offer architecture (marketing + finance), community experience plus product design (community + technology).
When a full team meeting is the right call instead. The work belongs primarily to one jacket. Full cross-jacket coordination is needed. More than two active lenses are needed.
Loading. Both active jackets fully loaded: both context files, both charters, both running notes, both dashboards. The most recent capture from either jacket as the continuity anchor.
A third jacket brought in as a filter step loads only its context file, only at the step where its lens applies. Common uses: a community or user-experience lens on outward-facing content concepts, a knowledge-design lens on artifact structure.
Voice discipline. Jacket-rotating, never blended. Sentences belong to one jacket or the other. Don't let the voices merge into a third character.
Three Solutions Rule in two-lens mode. Each jacket presents three options from its own lens. If both lenses converge on the same recommendation, name the convergence explicitly. That's the test of genuine cross-jacket alignment. If lenses diverge, both options surface separately and you decide which to weight.
Capture. A single capture in a dated session log named for both jackets. Both running notes update at close. Both dashboards refresh.
If a third jacket filtered through, name them in a filter-pass section of the capture. They're not listed as a co-active jacket.
Constraints
- The flow is universal. Each jacket calibrates emphasis, not the flow.
- Capture template carries the Three Laws fields. The discipline becomes data.
- First sessions weight on Step 3. Mature sessions compress it.
- You're in decision-density posture. The jacket synthesizes options. You decide.
- Energy beat at open and close. The session is alive, not procedural.
- Multi-jacket mode caps at two active jackets. A third may filter-pass without becoming active. Beyond that, use the Team Meeting.
This practice is one piece of a larger framework called The Alive Business. The Alive Business is a system for building a business that's actually yours, structured around eleven design layers from identity to expression to the infrastructure that keeps things running. It's available at sidequesthq.co if you want the full frame this session structure lives inside.
