Automation Scout

Automation Scout is a skill the department built and installed for every Bigge Claude and ChatGPT user. It turns an interview of under five minutes into a one-page Automation Candidate Brief in the department's format. You do not write anything. You answer questions, one at a time.

It exists because a useful brief needs the same facts every time, and nobody should have to memorize that checklist. The skill carries it, asks conversationally, and skips anything you have already answered.

How to use it

1. 01Open Claude or ChatGPT and describe the task, or just say that something is repetitive and takes forever. That is enough to trigger it. Asking for Automation Scout by name works too.
2. 02Answer its questions. One at a time, under five minutes, and it skips whatever you already covered.
3. 03Read the brief it produces, correct anything it got wrong, and send it: post it in the AI General channel or send it straight to me.

What it asks

1. 01What the task is, in your words, and what kicks it off: a request, a schedule, an event.
2. 02How often it happens and how long one round takes. If your answer is it depends, it asks for last week's number.
3. 03Which systems the task moves through. Names matter: WorkPro, D365, Salesforce, Coupa, Smartsheet, email, paper.
4. 04The worst step, and where the mistakes happen.
5. 05Which parts need a human decision and which parts are pure copying, clicking, and lookup.
6. 06Whether you would be the named business owner if it gets built. The department does not build unowned work.

It will not ask about rates, contract terms, or profitability, and if you volunteer them it leaves them out of the brief. That is deliberate. The brief is about the work, and it travels.

What comes out

One page: the task in your own words, the trigger, the systems, the worst step, and a few lines that decide how fast it moves.

1. 01Estimated hours per month, calculated from your frequency and time per round. This is the single most important line on the page, and the skill shows its arithmetic if you ask.
2. 02Mechanical versus judgment, which tells us how much of the task can be automated at all.
3. 03Blast radius: just you, your team, the region, or company-wide.
4. 04Scout's read: the skill's honest one-line assessment of automation potential. If the value depends on people voluntarily doing extra manual steps, it says so and the score drops. The test from my letter is built in.

The briefs that move fastest share one trait: real numbers. Runs per week and minutes per round beat a vague annoyance every time. And no solution is required. Describing the work accurately is the entire job.