Learn the system, then make it yours.
Guides for shaping work, collaborating with your AI team, connecting external tools, and choosing the right Pencil surface.
Understand products, features, iterations, tasks, and bugs before choosing a workflow.
Using Pencil
Mental models and everyday workflows for planning and shipping.
The opinionated mental model behind products, features, iterations, tasks, and bugs.
When to write a PRD vs an FRD, and how to use the AI-generated drafts well.
Your head agent (Chief of Staff), tagging agents in chat, and what they're actually good at.
Picking iteration scope, the relationship between iterations, sprints, and goals, and when to call something done.
Create structured system maps and process flows, organize them by project, save checkpoints, and export them.
Keep Pencil Ideas and a Notion database in sync without giving agents direct Notion credentials.
Install, pair, and run Pencil-assigned work on your computer.
Double Shift, Cmd+K, quick-add, and the handful of small moves that compound the more you use Pencil.
Talk to Pencil about your work and answer connected coding agents.
Create shareable pilot offers and inspect or deactivate them as a site administrator.
MCP & tool surfaces
Connect agents and clients through Pencil-owned tool surfaces.
Connect an MCP client through hosted OAuth, an API key, or local stdio.
Tool capabilities, transport boundaries, and permission controls.
Read exact task history, post comments, save deliverables, and attach repository work.
Developers & API
Structured access for services, integrations, and automation.
Projects & delivery
Guidance and reference material for this part of Pencil.