Best for
- Teams where onboarding is 'shadow someone and ask questions'
- Shrinking time-to-first-contribution from weeks to days
- Capturing what only the senior person knows before they leave
What you give it
- Access to the project, tools and existing docs; who the newcomer is
- Answers to the questions only veterans can answer — it will ask precisely
What you get back
- A day-one guide where every setup step was actually verified
- A role-based first-week path: what to read, do and ship, in order
- The tribal knowledge captured: how decisions happen, who owns what, the gotchas
How it works
- Tests existing onboarding material against reality first — broken steps are found by running them.
- Designs backwards from 'productive': the first real contribution defines the path to it.
- Interviews the veterans for the unwritten layer: norms, ownership, history, traps.
- Sequences by need-to-know, not everything-at-once — day one is not the place for the architecture lecture.
- Builds the feedback loop in, so each newcomer leaves the guide better.
Example
You: Our next engineer starts Monday. Onboarding is currently a wiki page from two years ago.
Result: The wiki page tested: 6 of 14 steps broken — fixed. A first-week path ending in a real shipped change on day four; a 'how things really work' section (review culture, deploy rhythm, who to ask what) built from interviewing you; and a day-five feedback loop so the guide improves with every hire.
Limits — please read
- Verification covers what it can execute; tool access only humans hold gets checklist treatment.
- Culture is captured as described plus observed; it cannot interview people you do not make available.
- Guides rot like docs rot — the feedback loop slows it, maintenance remains real.