Prerequisites
What competent use looks like is known: which objects matter, what fluent work with them looks like, and where the common ground with colleagues lies. Where the system will act on its own, competent use includes knowing what it will do unasked. That mapping happens before this sequence, and no pattern here makes it.
An actor arrives without a working model of the system, and every other sequence assumes they end up with one. Every actor goes through this. A smaller version repeats whenever the system changes under them, such as a new feature, a changed workflow, or the first run of a delegated capability.
Shaping the first encounter
Bound the first encounter — Onboarding
Make the first run a designed, bounded period with low stakes, doing preferred to reading, and safe failure. Decide what it must teach from the picture of competent use: which objects exist and where state lives, what happens when the actor acts, and what the system will do on its own. For an actor joining a system already in use, add what is already here and why, and let them trace how it came to be. Every scaffold put up here has to be cleared later.
Make the emptiness speak — Empty state
Use the first run's empty surfaces to teach: each says why there is nothing here and what would put something here. Decide only the first-run empty states here; the ones that come later, for filters and permissions, belong to the pass over every surface at the end.
Choose what the newcomer occupies
Fill the empty surface with something to occupy where possible, since occupying competent work teaches faster than reading about it. The options combine, and taking neither leaves the empty surface as the start. Generating the starting content from what the actor says they want is delegation, reached from here.
Combine any of:
Start them inside competent work — Template
Give the newcomer a shape that already reflects competent work, to adapt rather than invent. Give the set of templates an owner who revisits it as conventions change.
Walk them through dependent setup — Wizard
Where the first decisions depend on each other and are made once, present one at a time. Only the actor whose arrival includes that setup takes it, usually the first into a workspace; later joiners arrive into a system already configured.
Meeting friction
Applies when
Teaching ahead of time always misses something. The actor hits friction the first encounter did not cover, such as where they are, what a term means, or how to do a thing, and the answer is somewhere other than where they are looking.
Meet friction where it happens — Help
Keep a channel the actor can come to for the life of the surface. Place each answer at its point of need and pitch it at its subject: how to operate the interface, or why the domain works this way. Keep it true as the system changes. It re-teaches on demand what the first encounter taught ahead of time, and remains once the scaffolding is cleared.
Opening routes past the interface
Applies when
The actor uses the tool daily. The scaffolding that got them started is now in the way, and what limits them is the interface rather than their understanding of the work. Most actors stay comfortable intermediates, so everything opened here has to be optional.
Clear the scaffolding and open optional routes — Mastery
Clear the first encounter's scaffolding as competence grows. Open optional routes nobody is forced onto: accelerators for speed, depth for understanding, and the tool's movable parts for reshaping it. Keep the main path sufficient for those who never take them.
Name every command — Command menu
Make every command reachable by name, so the chrome no longer has to show everything and discovery becomes typing a guess. This is the first optional route most actors take. The menu shows only what applies here, so explaining a command the actor expected but cannot find is left to the pass at the end.
Bind the names to keys — Keyboard shortcuts
Bind keys to the named commands the actor uses often enough for motor memory. Show each shortcut where the actor already looks: as a hint on the slower path, and beside each name in the command menu.
Keeping the skill
Applies when
Some skills stop being exercised: procedures that matter but rarely come up, and work handed over to the system bit by bit. Unused skill fades, and two other sequences assume it has not: taking paused work back from the agent, and answering before the system does.
Choose what stays practised
From the record of what has been handed over, list the skills that must stay alive on the actor's side, graded by what losing them would cost: the work a takeback would return, the judgement that reviewing the system's output depends on, and the rare procedure that matters when it comes.
Re-expose what would fade — Mastery, its retention face
Schedule re-exposure for the skills on that list: a reminder on return, an echo of past decisions when a complex area is re-entered, spaced resurfacing of what was learned once. Place it where the actor already is, such as a review, a takeback, or an answer they are asked to attempt first.
Leaves: The competence the collaboration depends on is kept up deliberately. Practice costs attention, so the list stays short and is revisited as more work is handed over.
Connections
Calls Memory and continuity
At Shaping the first encounter, step 1, via Activity log
an actor joining a system in use learns what is already here by reading the kept record of how it came to be
Calls Delegating work
At Shaping the first encounter, step 3, via Prompt
a draft generated from what the newcomer says they want is that sequence's output, fetched at first run
Hands off to The encounter
At Meeting friction, step 1, via Inquiry (User)
when the question needs reasoning about the actor's own situation, help becomes a conversation, which that sequence opens
Hands off to Finishing the whole · not yet authored
At Opening routes past the interface, step 2, via Unavailable actions
a menu that shows only what applies leaves the expected but missing command unexplained, which that sequence's pass over every surface handles