let your agent do the monday triage
one prompt in claude code or cursor. the agent reads the board over mcp, finds duplicates, lines up tradeoffs, and stops before it moves anything.
Jessé Cruz
3 min read
monday morning the board has a week of new cards on it.
you can read them one by one. or you can hand the reading to the thing in your editor that already has your codebase open.
the setup, once
project → mcp → generate a token. paste the snippet for your editor. that's it. free plan included.
the agent gets fourteen tools. it can list, search, read, compare, and stat the board. it can also move, merge, reject, and publish. the prompt below only lets it use the first group.
the prompt
paste this as-is:
read the hoot board for this project.
1. run project-stats and tell me what changed this week.
2. list pending cards sorted by votes. for the top 5, read each one.
3. search for likely duplicates of each of those 5. list pairs with a one-line reason.
4. compare the top 5 side by side. give me the tradeoffs. do not pick a winner.
5. list any card with a visitor comment that has no public reply from the team.
do not move, merge, reject, or publish anything. give me a numbered list of
actions you'd take, one line each, and wait.
that's the whole thing. it takes the agent a minute.
what you get back
a short report. what came in. which cards are probably the same card. which asks are pulling against each other. who is waiting on a reply.
then a numbered list of suggestions. "merge #48 into #42." "reply to #51, visitor asked twice." "reject #39, out of scope, reason: …"
you read the list. you say "do 1, 3 and 4." it does those. it asks before each merge because the tool tells it to. rejecting without a reason fails on purpose.
the line i won't cross
the agent never decides what ships.
the compare tool's own description says present tradeoffs, don't pick a winner. the server instructions say votes measure demand, not priority. i wrote both so an agent with the whole board in context stays a reader, not a product manager.
you can override that in your prompt. i wouldn't.
why monday
because the week's cards are fresh and the week's plan isn't made yet.
a triage pass before you plan means the plan sees the feedback. a triage pass on friday means you're cleaning up. same tools, different outcome.
if you're already on hoot: generate a token if you haven't. paste the prompt. read the list.
if you're not: usehoot.app
ask. ship. let it read. 🦉