Discovery Eyes Skill
Every message your team writes is a potential exhibit with a highlighter across it, read aloud years later, stripped of tone and context. This skill performs that reading on sample messages — jokes that become admissions, speculation that becomes knowledge, "delete this after reading" that becomes the whole case — as prevention training. Its purpose is writing carefully and acting properly, never hiding, deleting, or evading: concealment is both the crime and the cover-up, and this skill refuses to help with either.
What This Skill Produces
- The exhibit reading — supplied sample messages, highlighted and characterized as a plaintiff's lawyer would
- The pattern list — the recurring habits that manufacture legal risk out of ordinary work
- The debrief — write-it-this-way rules that keep candor AND hygiene, plus when-to-pick-up-the-phone guidance
Required Inputs
Ask for these if not provided:
- Sample messages/threads — real (sanitized) or representative of the team's style
- The context — industry and the risk surfaces that matter (employment, IP, competition, safety, securities)
- The audience — engineers, sales, execs — the patterns differ by tribe
Framework: How the Highlighter Reads
- Tone strips off: sarcasm, hyperbole, and dark jokes read literally ("this feature will literally kill someone 😂" reads exactly as written, without the emoji's protection).
- Speculation becomes knowledge: "I bet the numbers are inflated" reads as awareness-at-the-time. The hygiene rule: state facts and questions, not unverified conclusions.
- The fatal phrases: "delete this," "keep this off email," "per our conversation" (after something sensitive), "I know we're not supposed to, but…" — each is a case-builder regardless of what follows.
- Casual legal conclusions: non-lawyers writing "this is definitely infringement/discriminatory/illegal" create exhibits lawyers then own. Rule: describe behavior, route legal characterization to counsel.
- The honest core: good hygiene is NOT saying less truth — it's precision (facts over vibes), routing (privileged questions to counsel properly), and escalation (real concerns raised through channels that fix them — a concern raised and addressed reads well in discovery; a concern joked about and dropped reads terribly).
Output Format
Exhibit Reading: [team/context]
Prevention training — a plausible adversarial reading of sample messages. This skill does not assist with deleting, concealing, or evading preservation obligations; if litigation is reasonably anticipated, preservation duties apply — see counsel.
The Exhibits
[message, quoted]
Highlighted as: [how it reads in a filing] · The pattern: [which habit produced it]
The Pattern List
[The 4–6 recurring habits in these samples, each with its risk mechanism]
Debrief — write it this way
| Instead of |
Write |
Why |
| [Plus: the pick-up-the-phone list (what belongs in synchronous conversation — decisions still get documented properly afterward), and the escalate-properly note: raised-and-fixed is the best exhibit there is] |
|
|
Quality Checks
Anti-Patterns
1---2name: discovery-eyes3description: Read your team's messages the way opposing counsel would in litigation discovery — prevention training that makes communication hygiene visceral. Use when asked how would our Slack look in discovery, train my team on communication hygiene, review this thread like a plaintiff's lawyer, or what shouldn't we put in writing. Produces the highlighted-exhibit reading of sample messages, the patterns that create legal risk, and a debrief with the write-it-this-way rules — strictly for prevention, never for concealment.4---5
6# Discovery Eyes Skill
7
8Every message your team writes is a potential exhibit with a highlighter across it, read aloud years later, stripped of tone and context. This skill performs that reading on *sample* messages — jokes that become admissions, speculation that becomes knowledge, "delete this after reading" that becomes the whole case — as prevention training. Its purpose is writing carefully and acting properly, **never** hiding, deleting, or evading: concealment is both the crime and the cover-up, and this skill refuses to help with either.
9
10## What This Skill Produces
11
12- **The exhibit reading** — supplied sample messages, highlighted and characterized as a plaintiff's lawyer would
13- **The pattern list** — the recurring habits that manufacture legal risk out of ordinary work
14- **The debrief** — write-it-this-way rules that keep candor AND hygiene, plus when-to-pick-up-the-phone guidance
15
16## Required Inputs
17
18Ask for these if not provided:
19- **Sample messages/threads** — real (sanitized) or representative of the team's style
20- **The context** — industry and the risk surfaces that matter (employment, IP, competition, safety, securities)
21- **The audience** — engineers, sales, execs — the patterns differ by tribe
22
23## Framework: How the Highlighter Reads
24
251. **Tone strips off:** sarcasm, hyperbole, and dark jokes read literally ("this feature will literally kill someone 😂" reads exactly as written, without the emoji's protection).
262. **Speculation becomes knowledge:** "I bet the numbers are inflated" reads as awareness-at-the-time. The hygiene rule: state facts and questions, not unverified conclusions.
273. **The fatal phrases:** "delete this," "keep this off email," "per our conversation" (after something sensitive), "I know we're not supposed to, but…" — each is a case-builder regardless of what follows.
284. **Casual legal conclusions:** non-lawyers writing "this is definitely infringement/discriminatory/illegal" create exhibits lawyers then own. Rule: describe behavior, route legal characterization to counsel.
295. **The honest core:** good hygiene is NOT saying less truth — it's precision (facts over vibes), routing (privileged questions to counsel properly), and escalation (real concerns raised through channels that fix them — a concern raised and addressed reads *well* in discovery; a concern joked about and dropped reads terribly).
30
31## Output Format
32
33# Exhibit Reading: [team/context]
34
35> Prevention training — a plausible adversarial reading of sample messages. This skill does not assist with deleting, concealing, or evading preservation obligations; if litigation is reasonably anticipated, preservation duties apply — see counsel.
36
37## The Exhibits
38> [message, quoted]
39**Highlighted as:** [how it reads in a filing] · **The pattern:** [which habit produced it]
40
41## The Pattern List
42[The 4–6 recurring habits in these samples, each with its risk mechanism]
43
44## Debrief — write it this way
45| Instead of | Write | Why |
46|---|---|---|
47[Plus: the pick-up-the-phone list (what belongs in synchronous conversation — decisions still get documented properly afterward), and the escalate-properly note: raised-and-fixed is the best exhibit there is]
48
49## Quality Checks
50
51- [ ] Every reading traces to a supplied message — no invented exhibits
52- [ ] The prevention-not-concealment banner appears in the artifact
53- [ ] Rewrites preserve the truth content — hygiene is precision, not omission
54- [ ] Legal-conclusion language is routed to counsel, not softened into nothing
55- [ ] The raised-and-fixed principle appears — the goal is better conduct, not quieter records
56
57## Anti-Patterns
58
59- [ ] Do not advise deleting, auto-expiring, or moving topics off-channel to evade records — that request ends the exercise and goes to counsel
60- [ ] Do not train people to stop reporting problems — suppressed concerns are worse in court AND in reality
61- [ ] Do not sanitize into meaninglessness — a team afraid to write anything ships nothing
62- [ ] Do not perform legal analysis — this is communication training; law belongs to lawyers
63- [ ] Do not read real named individuals' messages punitively — samples train teams; this is not a surveillance tool