Working Agreements Skill
Teams run on invisible rules — response-time expectations, camera norms, how decisions happen, whether 6pm messages demand answers — and every clash between two people's invisible rules gets misread as a character flaw ("he's unresponsive," "she's pushy"). Working agreements make the rules visible: a small set (6–10, not a constitution), derived from the team's actual frictions (not copied from a blog), phrased as observable behaviors ("we respond to non-urgent messages within one working day" — checkable) rather than values ("we communicate respectfully" — vibes), and revisited quarterly, because teams change and dead agreements poison live ones.
What This Skill Produces
- The agreement set — 6–10 norms across the friction zones: communication, meetings, decisions, availability, conflict
- The friction derivation — each agreement traces to a real clash it resolves (the trace is what makes it stick)
- The disagreement protocol — the one agreement every set needs: how we disagree, escalate, and commit
- The living rules — where the set lives, how newcomers meet it, and the quarterly revisit
Required Inputs
Ask for these if not provided:
- The frictions, honestly — the recurring clashes ("half the team answers at 10pm and expects the same," "decisions reopen weekly," "meetings start five minutes late, always") — agreements are friction-shaped or they're decoration
- The team's shape — size, time zones, remote/hybrid, the seniority spread; norms about availability and meetings are geometry-dependent
- What's already tacit-and-working — the good invisible rules worth writing down before someone violates them innocently
- The authority reality — is the lead imposing this or the team building it? (Built beats imposed by miles; the skill's process assumes a session, and the workshop-designer silent-first mechanics run it)
Framework: The Agreement Rules
- Derive from friction, not from ideals: each candidate agreement answers "which real clash does this resolve?" — the 10pm-message norm exists because of the 10pm-message resentment. Agreement sets copied from elsewhere describe someone else's frictions and get politely ignored.
- Phrase as observable behavior: "we respond to non-urgent asks within one working day; urgent is marked 🔴 and means today" is checkable; "we respect each other's time" is unfalsifiable. The test: could a newcomer tell whether the team kept the agreement this week?
- Small set, ranked frictions: 6–10 agreements maximum — the set covers the top frictions, and the rest stay unlegislated on purpose. Twenty agreements is a policy manual nobody consults; the small set gets memorized by osmosis.
- The disagreement protocol is the keystone: every set includes how conflict runs — "disagree openly in the room/thread, not after it · escalate to [lead] when stuck after one real attempt · once decided, commit outwardly" (decision-meeting-format dissent rules, socialized). Teams with this one agreement survive the failure of the others.
- Living or dead: the set lives where work happens (pinned, in the handbook page), newcomers get walked through it in week one (it's the onboarding-buddy-plan's best artifact), and the quarterly revisit asks two questions — which agreement did we break most (fix it or change it), and which friction is new (draft for it). An agreement violated freely for a quarter must be amended or re-committed; enforced-nowhere sets teach that all norms are theater.
Output Format
Working Agreements: [team] — v[N], next review [date]
The Set
| # |
Agreement (observable) |
The friction it resolves |
| [6–10 · the disagreement protocol among them, always] |
|
|
The Disagreement Protocol (spelled out)
[Openly, where · the escalation path · the commit norm]
Living Rules
[Where it's pinned · the newcomer walkthrough · the quarterly two-question revisit, calendared]
Quality Checks
Anti-Patterns
1---2name: working-agreements3description: Write a team's working agreements — the small set of explicit norms (communication, meetings, decisions, conflict) that replace the assumptions people were silently violating, built from the team's actual frictions and revisited on a cadence. Use when asked create team working agreements, set norms for our new team, we keep clashing over how we work, or onboard people into how this team operates. Produces the friction-derived agreement set, the specific-behavior phrasing, the disagreement protocol, and the review cadence.4---5
6# Working Agreements Skill
7
8Teams run on invisible rules — response-time expectations, camera norms, how decisions happen, whether 6pm messages demand answers — and every clash between two people's invisible rules gets misread as a character flaw ("he's unresponsive," "she's pushy"). Working agreements make the rules visible: a *small* set (6–10, not a constitution), derived from the team's actual frictions (not copied from a blog), phrased as observable behaviors ("we respond to non-urgent messages within one working day" — checkable) rather than values ("we communicate respectfully" — vibes), and revisited quarterly, because teams change and dead agreements poison live ones.
9
10## What This Skill Produces
11
12- **The agreement set** — 6–10 norms across the friction zones: communication, meetings, decisions, availability, conflict
13- **The friction derivation** — each agreement traces to a real clash it resolves (the trace is what makes it stick)
14- **The disagreement protocol** — the one agreement every set needs: how we disagree, escalate, and commit
15- **The living rules** — where the set lives, how newcomers meet it, and the quarterly revisit
16
17## Required Inputs
18
19Ask for these if not provided:
20- **The frictions, honestly** — the recurring clashes ("half the team answers at 10pm and expects the same," "decisions reopen weekly," "meetings start five minutes late, always") — agreements are friction-shaped or they're decoration
21- **The team's shape** — size, time zones, remote/hybrid, the seniority spread; norms about availability and meetings are geometry-dependent
22- **What's already tacit-and-working** — the good invisible rules worth writing down before someone violates them innocently
23- **The authority reality** — is the lead imposing this or the team building it? (Built beats imposed by miles; the skill's process assumes a session, and the [workshop-designer](../workshop-designer/SKILL.md) silent-first mechanics run it)
24
25## Framework: The Agreement Rules
26
271. **Derive from friction, not from ideals:** each candidate agreement answers "which real clash does this resolve?" — the 10pm-message norm exists because of the 10pm-message resentment. Agreement sets copied from elsewhere describe someone else's frictions and get politely ignored.
282. **Phrase as observable behavior:** "we respond to non-urgent asks within one working day; urgent is marked 🔴 and means today" is checkable; "we respect each other's time" is unfalsifiable. The test: could a newcomer tell whether the team kept the agreement this week?
293. **Small set, ranked frictions:** 6–10 agreements maximum — the set covers the *top* frictions, and the rest stay unlegislated on purpose. Twenty agreements is a policy manual nobody consults; the small set gets memorized by osmosis.
304. **The disagreement protocol is the keystone:** every set includes how conflict runs — "disagree openly in the room/thread, not after it · escalate to [lead] when stuck after one real attempt · once decided, commit outwardly" ([decision-meeting-format](../decision-meeting-format/SKILL.md) dissent rules, socialized). Teams with this one agreement survive the failure of the others.
315. **Living or dead:** the set lives where work happens (pinned, in the handbook page), newcomers get walked through it in week one (it's the [onboarding-buddy-plan](../onboarding-buddy-plan/SKILL.md)'s best artifact), and the quarterly revisit asks two questions — which agreement did we break most (fix it or change it), and which friction is new (draft for it). An agreement violated freely for a quarter must be amended or re-committed; enforced-nowhere sets teach that all norms are theater.
32
33## Output Format
34
35# Working Agreements: [team] — v[N], next review [date]
36
37## The Set
38| # | Agreement (observable) | The friction it resolves |
39|---|---|---|
40[6–10 · the disagreement protocol among them, always]
41
42## The Disagreement Protocol (spelled out)
43[Openly, where · the escalation path · the commit norm]
44
45## Living Rules
46[Where it's pinned · the newcomer walkthrough · the quarterly two-question revisit, calendared]
47
48## Quality Checks
49
50- [ ] Every agreement traces to a named real friction
51- [ ] Every agreement passes the newcomer-could-check test
52- [ ] The set is ≤10 with the disagreement protocol included
53- [ ] The team built it (or amended it) rather than receiving it
54- [ ] The revisit is calendared with its two questions
55
56## Anti-Patterns
57
58- [ ] Do not copy another team's agreements — their frictions, their fixes
59- [ ] Do not write values — behaviors check; values decorate
60- [ ] Do not legislate everything — the small set governs; the constitution gathers dust
61- [ ] Do not skip the conflict agreement — it's the one that carries the team when the others crack
62- [ ] Do not let violations ride silently — amend it or recommit to it; a dead agreement infects the set
Mohit Aggarwal