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Recall · The Chief of Staff

An AI chief of staff for your working life.

Recall started as a way to remember what needs doing. The Chief of Staff is the layer on top that reasons about it — ranking the highest-value work, catching what would quietly slip, and listening to what gets agreed in meetings so nothing has to be written down by hand.

It isn't a concept or a demo. It's a working system, running every day behind a real consulting practice.

The shift

From a task list to a reasoning layer.

A to-do list remembers things. It doesn't tell you which of them matters today, notice when a stated goal has gone quiet, or catch the promise you made out loud in a meeting and never wrote down. Those are judgement calls — and judgement is exactly the part that didn't get cheaper as AI made everything else almost free.

So the Chief of Staff is built around a single spine — and it carries a captured thought all the way along it:

capture→insight→commitment→action→achievement
The scarce thing is no longer producing the work. It's knowing what's worth doing — and making sure it actually happens.
What it does

Three things a task list can't.

01

Keeps track of the work on its own

Every commitment, every change, every slip is recorded as it happens — across clients, projects and personal life. There's no priority field to groom and no weekly tidy-up. The record is always complete, and always queryable.

Command centre
Today · what matters now
Send fares options paper to Northgate Transit
Due todayNorthgate
Confirm pilot station list with Coastal Rail
Coastal Rail2 days
Circulate workshop notes
Done · 9:10
02

Resurfaces what actually matters

Not a due-date sort — a reasoned ranking. It weighs each piece of work against the goals you've set, and tells you the order and the why. Ask it "what have I been neglecting?" and it will tell you straight.

Assistant
YouWhat have I been neglecting?
DemerzelTwo things. The Coastal Rail commercial model has had no movement in 11 days, and it's on the critical path to the June launch. And you've deferred the Meadowvale review twice now — worth a decision either way.
Ranked against your stated goal: “PAYG live across the region by Q3.”
03

Hears what was agreed

It reads the transcripts of your meetings and reconciles what was said against what's tracked. The commitment you made in passing — yours or someone else's — becomes a captured task, proposed for a one-tap confirmation. Nothing relies on you remembering to write it down.

To reconcile · from your meetings
New commitment detected: “I'll send the revised capping rules by Friday.”
From: Northgate Transit fares workshop · not yet tracked
Create taskEditDismiss
A point of view

It reasons in two voices, and records in a third.

Most of the interesting decisions involve a real tension — between the long game and the thing due tomorrow. Rather than flatten that into one bland recommendation, the Chief of Staff externalises it. Two reasoning voices argue it out; you only hear them disagree when it genuinely matters.

Seldon

Counsel of the long arc

The foresight half. Holds the goals, watches for drift, and asks the awkward question: “you said this matters — so why is nothing moving toward it?”

Demerzel

Hand of the present

The accountability half. Guards the live commitments, presses on what's slipping, and keeps the day honest against what was promised.

Pirenne

The functionary

The record-keeper. Captures, files and writes things down faithfully — but only ever acts once a decision has been made and approved.

Honest status

Live today — and what's next.

Most of the core is built and in daily use. Some of the richest ideas are deliberately still ahead. Here's the honest split.

Live today

  • Goals model — multi-horizon objectives the work is measured against
  • Value reasoner — the ranked, explained “what matters now”
  • Anticipation — slips, quiet projects, goals with no path
  • Meeting reconciliation — said-vs-tracked from transcripts
  • Daily brief, command centre & assistant
  • Weekly, monthly & quarterly rituals
  • Propose-and-approve + graduated autonomy

On the roadmap

  • Vault synthesis — pre-meeting briefs from years of notes
  • Real-time nudges — the right prompt at the right moment
  • In-chat intervention — a careful aside, mid-conversation
  • Broader mail ingestion — beyond meetings
  • Agentic execution — handling the low-value busywork itself
What this makes possible

Keep the record, lose the admin.

The point isn't a cleverer to-do list. It's that the mechanical part of staying on top of work — tracking it, ranking it, catching what slips, writing down what was agreed — can largely look after itself, leaving the judgement to you. This site is a tour of one working example of that.