Handover Doc Builder
The knowledge in a departing employee's head captured in a document their replacement can run from on day one, built in three short interviews before they leave
The problem
Your office manager gives two weeks' notice. She knows which supplier answers the phone and which one needs an email, where the insurance renewal lives, why the Tuesday delivery is late, the password pattern for the three systems nobody else logs into, and which customer gets a call before an invoice. In two weeks that knowledge walks out. The replacement starts a week after, inherits a desk and a shared drive, and spends two months rediscovering things that were known. The handover document that was supposed to prevent this is usually a page written on the last afternoon. This skill runs the handover as three interviews across the notice period, and writes the document as it goes.
The tool
Once installed, this skill is the interviewer who asks the departing person the questions the replacement will wish someone had asked. It starts with the calendar: what happens daily, weekly, monthly, yearly in this role, and what's coming in the next 90 days that the replacement will have to handle cold. Then the people: the suppliers, the customers, the colleagues, each with the two-line note that saves a bad first call. Then the systems: what they log into, what they do there, where the manuals are and who the admin is. Passwords stay out; the skill tells them to move those into the password manager and record only where they live.
The third interview is the one most handovers miss: the judgment calls. Why things are done the way they are, which rules have exceptions and who approved them, what went wrong last year and how it was handled. The output is one document in the role's own structure, plus a 30-day plan for the replacement and a list of open items with the person who holds each. The procedures it uncovers can be written up properly later with the SOP Writer; the handover captures that they exist and who knows them.
What's inside
- Three interview scripts for the notice period: the calendar, the people and systems, the judgment calls
- A handover document in the role's structure: recurring work, relationships, systems, open items, the next 90 days
- A "why we do it this way" section that captures the reasons behind the odd rules
- A 30-day plan for the replacement, with the people to meet in week one
- An open-items register: what's in flight, its status, who else knows, and the date it matters
- A last-day checklist: access to remove, property to collect, forwarding to set, the goodbye email
How to use it
- 1Click "Install skill" on this page and copy the install prompt.
- 2Paste it into your AI assistant (ChatGPT, Claude, anything that accepts pasted text).
- 3Tell it the role, the departure date, and whether a replacement has been named.
- 4Run the three interviews with the departing person over the notice period, pasting their answers; the document grows after each one.
- 5Hand the finished document and the 30-day plan to the replacement, and walk the open-items register together in their first week.
Example
A nine-person property maintenance company in Oshawa loses its scheduler after four years. The first interview surfaces the yearly calendar: the fall furnace inspections start in six weeks and she's the only one who knows which of the 140 units has a gas appliance. The second produces the people notes, including the one contractor who will only take calls before 8 a.m. The third catches the judgment calls: two tenants are on a "call the owner first" list for reasons that were never written down. The document runs eleven pages. The replacement reads it on day one, starts the furnace list on day two, and the owner's phone is quieter in October than it has been in years.
Pro tip
Run the first interview in the first two days of the notice period, when the person is still engaged, and the judgment-call interview last, when they trust that you're trying to protect their work rather than audit it. And have the replacement, if they're already hired, sit in on the third one. The questions they ask are the ones you'd never think of.
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