spb/ultra-sharp-agent-skills Public

1<!--2Author: Simon-Pierre Boucher3Contact: contact@spboucher.ai4-->56# Examples — Executive Summary House Style78## Contents9- Opening-sentence pairs10- Complete worked example (bad → house style)11- The "no recommendation yet" variant12- Gotchas1314## Opening-sentence pairs1516| ❌ Never | ✅ House style |17|---|---|18| "This report presents the findings of our infrastructure review." | "Recommendation: consolidate to one cloud region, saving $84k/yr at negligible latency cost." |19| "Over the past quarter, the team has been analyzing churn." | "Churn doubled in Q2 (4.1% → 8.3%); the driver is the March pricing change, and we recommend reverting it for accounts under 50 seats." |20| "Several options were considered for the mobile strategy." | "We should ship the responsive web app now and defer the native app 12 months; this captures 80% of the value at 20% of the cost." |2122## Complete worked example2324**❌ Bad version (methodology-first, adjectives, no pick):**2526> **Executive Summary**27>28> As part of our ongoing commitment to operational excellence, a29> cross-functional working group was convened to evaluate our customer30> support tooling. The group conducted stakeholder interviews, reviewed31> industry benchmarks, and assessed three leading platforms across a32> comprehensive evaluation matrix. Each option presents meaningful benefits.33> Platform A offers robust automation. Platform B provides significant34> flexibility. Platform C is a strong contender on price. The working group35> presents these options for leadership consideration. Adoption of a new36> platform is expected to substantially improve response times and deliver37> considerable cost efficiencies.3839**✅ House-style version:**4041> **Executive Summary**42>43> **Recommendation:** adopt Platform A for customer support, replacing44> Zendesk in Q4. Net saving: $61k/yr; payback in 7 months (high confidence —45> pricing is contracted, migration quoted).46>47> **Why:**48> - Automation resolves an estimated 38% of tier-1 tickets (measured in our49>   3-week pilot: 41% on 1,200 tickets).50> - First-response time drops from 6.2h to under 1h for automated categories.51> - Only option meeting our EU data-residency requirement out of the box.52>53> **Cost & risk:**54> - $45k migration (one-time) + $9k/mo licence (vs $14k/mo today).55> - Risk: agent adoption → mitigation: 2-week parallel run, champions per team.56> - Risk: data-migration loss → mitigation: vendor-managed migration with57>   row-count verification; Zendesk kept read-only for 90 days.58>59> **Next step:** sign by Aug 15 (quote expiry); IT kickoff Aug 18. Owner: S. Boucher.60>61> *Methodology and full scoring matrix: appendix B.*6263## The "no recommendation yet" variant6465> **Executive Summary**66>67> **We cannot yet recommend a platform:** the two finalists are tied on cost68> and features, and the deciding factor — EU data-residency certification for69> Platform B — is unconfirmed. Vendor answer due Aug 12; we will issue the70> recommendation Aug 13. If forced to decide today, Platform A (the71> reversible choice: month-to-month contract).7273## Condensing an existing report (summary-at-the-top variant)7475When the summary heads a longer document, it must stand alone — assume most76readers stop after it.7778| ❌ Never | ✅ House style |79|---|---|80| "As detailed in section 4…" (forces the jump) | State the number here; cite the section in parentheses for the curious. |81| "See below for our recommendation." | The recommendation is sentence one of the summary itself. |82| Summarizing section by section in document order | Reorganize into Recommendation → Rationale → Cost & Risk regardless of the report's structure. |83| New information that appears only in the summary | Everything in the summary exists in the body; the summary selects, never adds. |8485## Gotchas8687- **The summary written before the analysis ends** becomes advocacy. Write88  the recommendation sentence only when you can defend its number.89- **"High/medium/low confidence" without basis** is an adjective in disguise —90  attach what makes it high ("contracted pricing", "n=1,200 pilot").91- **Percentage without base** ("38% of tickets") invites the first hostile92  question; give the base once ("of 1,200 pilot tickets").93- **Next step without an owner and date** means no next step.94- **Executive summaries of bad news** follow the same BLUF rule — burying95  "we lost the account" in paragraph three reads as spin, not tact.96