Desk mode

Desk mode saves your desk so you only describe it once. A black pen and a highlighter is already a complete kit — every role either gets its own pen or prints as a circled letter — so setting this up never blocks the work.

What you say

Ask for it directly (“let’s set up my desk”), list what you have (“a mono printer, A4, black, blue, red and green pens, a highlighter, scissors”), or wave it off entirely (“just use whatever”). If you list your desk, nothing further is asked — the agent fills any gaps with sensible defaults and tells you which ones it filled. If you wave it off, the same thing happens with the minimum kit. Anything in between gets one batched question covering the whole desk: printer and paper, pen colours, a highlighter, a pencil, scissors, tape or glue, sticky notes, index cards, a few coins, a timer, wall space, a phone camera.

What you get

Your pens mapped to roles in priority order — Ask, Stop, Keep, Crux, Maybe, Sense, Draft — each role taking the first matching pen you own, with a role that has no matching pen printed as a circled letter instead. The profile is saved from this mapping, and the done message that follows shows you the pen-to-role table and offers a swap there (a pink pen can be your Stop pen instead of red, for instance) — a swap re-imports the profile rather than reopening the question.

The result is written once, to your saved profile, and every workbook after that inherits it automatically — you do not restate your desk each time you ask for a page.

What you do

Nothing on paper this time; this mode is a conversation, not a printed page. You get one message back with your assumptions, your pen-to-role table, and the same legend switchback legend would print for you, plus a line on how to change anything later: ask for desk mode again, or edit one setting directly.

If the question about your desk came up in the middle of asking for a workbook, the agent returns to composing that workbook once your desk is saved — you do not need to ask for it again.