Teach Your Skill Which Chapter Applies to a Reader's Situation

To help a reader find the right part of your book, teach the skill what makes each procedure appropriate. Ask for the facts that distinguish those situations, explain the proposed route, and let the reader correct it before beginning. A chapter title alone rarely contains that decision rule.

Your intake should answer a practical question: given what this reader is trying to do and what they already have, which part of the method can help next?

The work starts with your judgment as an author. When someone brings a question to a workshop, you probably do not recite the table of contents. You ask what happened, what they have tried, or what decision is approaching. Those questions reveal the conditions that belong in the skill.

An intake can be formally correct and still leave readers confused. If the route is called “Stage Three: Alignment,” they may not know what will happen or whether it fits.

In a nonfiction-writing discussion, u/Bias explained a reading preference:

“I like knowing right off the bat what I'm going to get from a book.”

That is one person's preference, not a general finding about readers. It is a useful standard for naming a route: make the immediate result visible. Original comment.

For an author of a community-event handbook, “assign the remaining volunteer jobs” is easier to distinguish from “review what happened at the last event” than two abstract framework names. You can retain your terminology after explaining the action it supports.

Routing also requires more than matching words. Someone saying “I need help planning” might have no event purpose, a finished agenda with unfilled roles, or a previous event they want to improve. Each situation calls for different information.

List the procedures your first skill will support. For each, finish this sentence: “Use this when the reader has ___ and needs ___.” Then write a nearby case that should take a different route.

Keep the conditions observable. “The reader is overwhelmed” may describe a feeling, but it does not establish which procedure applies. “The event is next week, the agenda is agreed, and two essential jobs have no owner” supports a more precise decision.

A real event-planning question illustrates why this matters. u/Position-Initial wrote:

“well technically this isnt my first event but it is the first one im organizing alone without help from another brand.”

The post then describes difficulty obtaining vendor confirmations. Experience level alone would miss the immediate issue. This is a public account of one situation, not evidence that the proposed skill would solve it. Original discussion.

When reviewing your own reader questions, separate identity from state. “Beginner” is an identity label. “Has a date but no agreed purpose” describes the state of the work. The second is more useful when choosing the next procedure.

The following book, rules, and readers are fictional. They illustrate an author-designed intake; no event organizer was interviewed and no AI interaction was run for this example.

Imagine a book about small community gatherings. Its first companion supports three tasks:

The routes have different starting materials. Role allocation needs a working agenda. Review needs an event that has happened. These are the important distinctions; the reader's familiarity with the author's vocabulary is secondary.

Keep unsupported tasks visible too. A reader needing venue safety approval should not be forced into one of these routes. The skill can explain its scope and ask the reader to consult the responsible venue or organizer. That boundary is part of the fictional method, not a complete event-management protocol.

Start with a question that splits the possible tasks: “Are you preparing for an upcoming gathering, or reviewing one that has already happened?” If the reader already supplied that fact, use it and confirm only if it is unclear.

Then follow the relevant branch:

1. Reviewing a completed event: ask what happened and what observations are available. Offer the review route. If the reader has only a general impression, begin by identifying the missing observations.
2. Preparing a future event: ask whether the purpose and working agenda are agreed. If they are not, offer the clarification route.
3. Purpose and agenda agreed: ask what is currently blocking preparation. If the issue is unassigned work, offer the role-gap route. If it is outside the supported tasks, explain the limit.
4. Several situations mixed together: ask which event or decision the reader wants to handle first. Do not merge last month's review with next week's staffing plan without making that choice explicit.

This is a small decision tree, not a mandatory questionnaire. A reader who says “Our next event has an agenda but nobody is handling setup” has already answered much of it.

For each question, write the branch it can change. If you cannot identify one, consider removing the question or postponing it until the chosen procedure needs the answer. Asking for an author's complete reader profile is unnecessary when only the event's stage matters.

Maya is arranging her first neighborhood gathering. She has a possible date but says the group has not decided whether the purpose is meeting neighbors or exchanging practical skills. The proposed route is clarification. The explanation is specific: the group needs an agreed purpose before the skill can sensibly help divide preparation work.

The skill should not infer that Maya needs every beginner lesson in the book. It should ask about the intended gathering and help draft the purpose statement. If she reveals that a purpose was already agreed in a document, the route may change.

Luis has a purpose, a simple agenda, and three willing volunteers. His problem is that setup and cleanup have no owner. The proposed route is role gaps. The expected first output is a list of the unowned jobs, with requirements and questions to confirm with volunteers.

A poor route would send Luis back to define the event's purpose merely because he calls himself inexperienced. Another poor output would assign cleanup to a named volunteer who never agreed. Routing correctly does not excuse later assumptions.

Hana is reviewing a gathering held last weekend. She has attendance notes and two pieces of participant feedback. The proposed route is review. The skill should distinguish those observations from Hana's interpretation that the event felt rushed, then help identify a change to consider.

If Hana instead asks for a staffing plan for the next gathering, confirm the switch and use the future-event branch. Conversation history should inform the decision without trapping the reader in the first route chosen.

These are expected behaviors written by an editor. They become evidence about the skill only after actual runs are retained and checked.

A useful transition contains three elements: the selected procedure, the evidence for choosing it, and an invitation to correct the starting facts.

For Luis, an authored example would be:

“You have an agreed purpose and agenda, and the remaining issue is unowned work. Let's identify the role gaps using the volunteer-planning procedure. If the agenda is still changing, tell me before we assign jobs to it.”

This gives Luis something concrete to verify. “I have analyzed your needs and selected the optimal framework” conceals the decision and overstates certainty.

You do not need to expose implementation details. Explain the practical reason for the recommendation in language the reader can correct. Keep chapter references available for someone who wants the fuller explanation.

Include “not enough information” in your routing rules. If the reader says only “everything is a mess,” ask for the approaching decision or the current state of the work. Do not interpret emotional intensity as proof that a particular chapter applies.

If two routes fit, present the tradeoff. Reviewing last month's event may inform next month's plan, but an imminent staffing gap may need attention first. Let the reader choose the priority when the method does not dictate one.

Preserve contradictory facts until they are resolved. “The agenda is final” and “we have not decided what activities to run” cannot both support the same planning assumption. Ask which statement reflects the current situation.

Write a route-change rule as well: when new information invalidates the current branch, summarize what changed, propose the new route, and retain useful confirmed information. Avoid silently switching tasks halfway through an output.

Before judging the quality of a finished plan, inspect whether the skill chose the appropriate process. Keep a compact set of examples containing the input, expected route, decisive facts, and acceptable clarification questions.

Include the three readers above, then alter one important fact in each. Change Maya's purpose from unresolved to agreed. Remove Luis's agenda. Change Hana's event from completed to upcoming. A useful check asks whether the route changes for the reason you intended.

Also include a request outside scope and a reader who corrects an earlier answer. Record actual behavior and revise the rule when necessary. The agent skill testing guide explains how to evaluate real execution beyond reviewing instruction text.

To develop your own intake, bring three supported tasks, their entry conditions, and contrasting reader situations to Skillfully. Choose Book onboarding to discuss turning that author judgment into a skill.