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The Folder System Became My Agency
Twenty-four days ago I posted about Jake's folder system video. This is what happened next. Same foundation โ€” markdown files, orchestration prompts, clear roles. I just kept building. Fifteen named specialists. Each one with a soul file, guardrails, and a playbook. Duke orchestrates. Cash writes. Trace pulls the data. Hank runs the financials. Clint handles the MCP integrations. Behind each one is either a human counterpart doing the real work alongside them โ€” or a role I can't afford to hire yet. Katie who's been with me for 18 years, now has her own orchestrator running the same system. Twenty-seven client folders. Twelve live MCP integrations. One shared repo. The folder system isn't replacing my agency. It becoming my agency. Jake gave me the unlock. This is how it's going.
The Folder System Became My Agency
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Welcome to Clief Notes. Here's where to start.
1. Watch the intro video and introduce yourself in the intro post here 2. Start with The Foundation (free course). Concepts, folder architecture, prompting framework. Everything else builds on this. 3. Check in at the bottom of each lesson. Polls, discussion posts, other members working through the same stuff. Use them. 4. When you're ready to build real things, move to Implementation Playbooks (Level 2). When you're ready to build your own tools, Building Your Stack (Level 3). 5. Post your work. Ask questions. Help others when you can. What are you here to build?
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๐Ÿ† WEEKLY COMP #7: THE OPERATOR ๐Ÿ†
๐ŸŽŸ๏ธ PRIZE: FREE SEAT IN THE LYCEUM ๐ŸŽŸ๏ธ Pick your cohort. Technical, Business, or Creator. Your call. ---- ๐Ÿ‡ฌ๐Ÿ‡ง We're back. Good morning from London. ๐Ÿ‘‹ Thanks for the patience last week. Jake and I needed a few days to breathe before London Tech Week kicked off, and you all responded with nothing but support. We don't take that for granted. Now let's get back to building. ---- ๐Ÿ“‹ THE CHALLENGE Build a folder-based AI operator that handles ONE operational workflow end-to-end. You pick the workflow. This week's deliverable is one operator folder that someone could drop into a Claude project and use to handle a real business workflow without babysitting. ---- ๐ŸŽฏ PICK YOUR WORKFLOW The workflow is yours. Pick something specific. Pick something you'd actually use. A few sparks to get you thinking: - ๐ŸŽซ Customer support triage (which tier handles this ticket?) - โœ… Content review and approval - ๐Ÿ“จ Lead intake and qualification - ๐Ÿ’ธ Refund request handler - ๐Ÿค Partnership pitch evaluator - ๐ŸŽ™๏ธ Podcast guest pitch sorter - ๐Ÿ’ผ Freelance project intake - ๐Ÿ“„ Resume screen for one specific role - ๐Ÿ“… Meeting request triage (book, decline, delegate) The more specific, the better. "Customer support" is too broad. "Refund request triage for an ecommerce store doing under 200 orders per month" is right. ๐Ÿ“Ž If you want a fully written client brief as a reference, the attached PDF walks through one example. Don't build the example. Use it as a template for how to think about scoping your own operator. ---- ๐Ÿ—‚๏ธ THE METHODOLOGY If this is your first comp, welcome. Here's what you need to know: This week (and every week) you're learning interpretable context methodology. Folders as architecture. Each file does one job well. Your operator is a folder with five things: - ๐Ÿ“„ identity.md (who the operator is and what workflow they own) - ๐Ÿ“ rules.md (the decision logic: criteria, edge cases, escalation rules) - ๐Ÿ’ฌ examples.md (decisions in action, including at least one edge case) - ๐Ÿ“š reference/ (checklists, templates, rubrics) - ๐Ÿ“– README.md (how to use it)
Your AI agent needs an identity, not just instructions ...
Just tightened my ICM knowledge base / workspace and realized something that should have been obvious: Most people write prompts. Fewer people write identity. So I made a reusable Operator Identity template for any workspace. It defines who the agent is, what loop it owns, how it should think, what it will not do, and which files are the source of truth. The part that helped most was separating role from rules... Identity says what the Operator owns, while the rules say how work gets done. Identity.md now has sections for: - Operating Posture - Quality Standard - Core Work - Boundaries - Non-Negotiables - Execution Sources Curious how @Bas Rosario @Don Roy @Curtis Hays @Ari Evergreen @Kevin Carrasco @David Vogel and others do this: Do you write a separate Identity for your agents, or do you keep everything inside one big instruction file? Anything else you include in Identity?
Built a reusable Claude Code project template that wires Jake's three-layer routing system into a full session architecture.
The template integrates three frameworks: Van Clief's routing (the structural backbone), Karpathy's behavioral rules (think before acting, minimum viable scope, surgical changes, goal-driven execution), and IBE intent preservation (the "why" behind every decision). Each tier has a clear job โ€” CLAUDE.md routes, workspace context files carry domain knowledge, skills wire selectively per task. The core addition on top of Jake's routing: a session state pattern (STATE.md) that eliminates cold-start friction. Each session closes by setting the next session's intent. Work becomes a directed sequence rather than a series of isolated conversations. Results from two validations (a meta-framework design project and a non-software operational coordination project): - Zero context re-establishment at session start - Zero intent-misaligned rework - Second project stood up in ~25 min on first attempt, no structural modifications needed Template is public: https://gitlab.com/vigilkeep/ibe-workflow-template Happy to share the ADR that documents the one deliberate deviation from 3.3 guidance (CLAUDE.md runs ~70 lines instead of 40โ€“50 โ€” there's a specific reason).
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Jake Van Clief, giving you the Cliff notes on the new AI age.
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