business-pulse

Business Pulse

One prompt, one page. Pull live data from every connected tool, synthesize it into a single scannable brief, and surface the single most important thing to act on today. Do the work — don't ask the user to help find the data.

Step 1 — Pull data in parallel

Dispatch all connector calls in a single parallel batch — see reference/data_sources.md for the exact tool-to-metric mapping. Do not pull serially; latency turns a 30-second skill into a painful wait.

Connectors to attempt simultaneously:

• QuickBooks — cash balance, MTD revenue, outstanding receivables, overdue invoices
• Xero — same ledger read for Xero shops: cash position, receivables, P&L trend
• Zoho Books — same ledger read for Zoho shops: bank balances, invoiced revenue, overdue invoices (no P&L endpoint, so the revenue line is invoiced revenue and says so)
• PayPal / Square — 7-day settlements, sales trend, failed/pending transactions
• Stripe — settlements and sales trend, failed payments, and any new disputes — a fresh dispute goes straight to the watch list (if connected)
• Ramp — company card spend for the week and the account balance, read-only (if connected)
• Gusto — next payroll run date and amount, the week's biggest cash commitment (if connected)
• TikTok Ads — last week's ad spend, results, and cost per result, so paid spend shows up next to the sales it claims to drive (if connected)
• Expensify — last week's card spend and any expenses missing receipts, read-only, so spending surprises surface before the month-end scramble (if connected)
• HubSpot — pipeline by stage, deals moved/closed, deals gone cold, new leads
• Google Calendar — key meetings, deadlines, events this week and next 7 days
• Gmail or Microsoft 365 — threads flagged urgent, customer complaints, time-sensitive requests
• Slack / Teams — urgent internal signals, threads needing owner attention
• RingEx Chat — the same internal-signal read for RingEx shops: urgent team-chat posts needing the owner (if connected)
• DocuSign — envelopes sitting unsigned, flagged once they are more than a few days old — money waiting on a signature (if connected)
• Zoho Desk — open tickets, escalations (if connected)
• Shopify — orders, revenue, sales trend, and fulfillment issues, so a commerce business sees its actual day (if connected)
• Square — fulfillment issues (if connected)

If a connector errors or returns no data, record it internally and move on. Never block the pulse on a single bad integration.

QuickBooks fallback: if QBO returns an unexpected state (account not connected, sync pending, empty response), mark the Cash section "n/a — QuickBooks unavailable" and proceed. Do not retry or ask the user to reconnect.

Gmail fallback: Gmail auth is intermittently flaky. If the call errors, skip the Watch List section silently and note "Gmail unavailable" in the appendix — do not surface an error mid-pulse.

Nothing connected at all is a supported path, not a failure. If every connector is unavailable, don't stop and don't tell the owner to go connect things. Ask once, in one short message, for the handful of numbers that carry the pulse:

• Cash in the bank right now, and roughly what it was a week ago
• Anything overdue — invoices owed to them, bills they owe
• Sales this week versus a normal week, even roughly
• Anything already worrying them this week

Build the same one-page pulse from those answers, label the source line "owner-supplied, not pulled," and skip any section they had no number for. If they'd rather not type numbers, point them at the siblings that run off a file export instead — cash-flow-snapshot and report-builder both take a CSV — and say plainly that gives a partial picture, not the full one.

Step 2 — Compute metrics

Read reference/thresholds.md for red/yellow/green cutoffs. Compute:

• AR aging — open QuickBooks invoices grouped by days since due date (0–30, 31–60, 61+)
• Pipeline coverage — HubSpot weighted pipeline ÷ monthly revenue target
• Revenue trend — this month's QBO revenue vs. prior month (or 7-day PayPal/Square vs. prior 7 days)

Assign a 🟢/🟡/🔴 status to each section. If a source returned nothing, mark the metric "n/a" and note it in the appendix.

Step 3 — Flag risks proactively

Scan for actionable items. Every risk entry must name a specific record and a next step — "some overdue invoices" is useless; "USD 3,400 from Acme Corp, 47 days overdue, no response since Mar 12" is actionable.

• Ledger invoices past due > 30 days — name customer, amount, days overdue
• HubSpot deals with no activity in 7+ days, or close date in past but still open
• Mail threads marked urgent or containing "escalation," "complaint," "cancel," "refund"
• Failed or pending PayPal/Square/Stripe transactions above the threshold in reference/thresholds.md (200 in the business's currency)

Step 4 — Compose the output

Use the exact template in reference/output_template.md. Include only sections where real data exists — omit headers for connectors that weren't available. Adapt depth to context: a casual "how are we doing" gets a fuller report; "quick snapshot before a call" gets a tighter one.

Cross-connector synthesis is where this skill earns its keep. If a Slack message connects to a stalled HubSpot deal, surface that link in the #1 Priority section. Synthesis is what makes the pulse more useful than checking each tool separately.

Writing rules:

• Numbers lead, words follow. Never write "revenue is healthy" — write "USD 43k this month, ▲ 8% MoM" and let the owner judge.
• Every number carries a delta vs. the prior period where available. Absolute snapshots (cash balance) still show WoW delta.
• Names and dollars, not adjectives. "USD 4,200 from Acme, 23 days overdue" beats "some concerning receivables."
• No filler. If a section has nothing worth reporting, write "No material changes" and move on.

Step 5 — Deliver the pulse page

Alongside the chat pulse — never instead of it — deliver the full pulse per the owner's stored output preference — never default to a markdown file. Check the ## Business context block's Output preference (shared style guide rule, ../../shared/artifact-style.md):

• Visual artifact (the default): render the pulse as an HTML page in the house style. Cash balance, MTD revenue, and weighted pipeline are stat tiles with their deltas as context lines; each section's 🟢/🟡/🔴 becomes a status pill (good, warn, critical); the watch-list risks are a table with tabular-nums amount columns; the #1 Priority gets its own panel at the top; unavailable connectors go in one quiet appendix line.
• docx / md / notion / canva preference: deliver the same content in that form — a DOCX or markdown file, a Notion page created via the connector (named destination, never overwriting), or a Canva Doc created via the Canva connector (a new design each run, named with the date; tables become lists); fall back to the visual artifact if Notion or Canva is not connected — and say that is why.
• Best for skill: use the visual artifact — a pulse is scanned, not filed.

Step 6 — Export and share (once)

After presenting the pulse, offer once:

• "Want me to save this as a file?" (use Files connector if available — this means a copy in their drive, not a second HTML download beside the artifact)
• "Should I post this to your Slack?" (only if Slack is connected and the user confirms — Slack write requires explicit approval)

If they say yes, do it. If they say no or don't respond, move on — don't ask again.

After the run

Close with one line on what the pulse covered, then the single most relevant next step and at most two others nearby:

• If cash or AR flagged red: "who owes me money" runs invoice-chase.
• If growth questions dominate: "is my marketing working" runs growth-pulse.
• To make this recurring: "Monday brief" runs /monday-brief every week.

Max three offers. Never repeat an offer the owner declined this session.

Scope variants

The owner may ask for a narrower cut:

• "Just cash" / "financial check" → only Cash & Finance + AR-related risks
• "Pipeline only" / "deals check" → only Pipeline section + stalled-deal risks
• "Watch list" / "anything urgent" → only Watch List + all risks, no metric sections
• "Quick snapshot before a call" → TL;DR + #1 Priority only, no full sections

What not to do

• Do not ask permission before pulling data. If the skill was invoked, run it. Asking "should I check QuickBooks?" defeats the whole point.
• Do not invent or estimate numbers. If a source returned nothing, say "n/a" explicitly. Never fill a gap with guesswork.
• Do not skip the delta. A number without a comparison is a missed insight. If there's no prior-period baseline, say "(no prior baseline)" rather than omitting the field.
• Do not surface connector errors mid-pulse. Log them to the appendix. The pulse leads with what was delivered.
• Do not trust a QuickBooks summary object. Expenses, margin, and AP aging buckets come from the rows or the detail call (../../shared/quickbooks-report-traps.md).

More sources, and scheduled presets

Read reference/v2_sources.md for the mapping:

• Shopify — orders, revenue, and fulfillment status, so a commerce business sees its actual day in the pulse
• Any ledger — MYOB, NetSuite, QuickBooks, Xero, or Zoho Books feed the Cash & Finance section; they are peers (../../shared/connector-neutrality.md). With two connected, the owner names one as the source of record for totals

The pulse still builds from whatever is connected and degrades gracefully — one connector gives a partial pulse, the full stack gives the full picture.

Scheduled presets

This skill is schedulable, and the preset decides the shape:

Scheduling is a property of this skill, not a reason for a separate command.

Offer a cadence once, after a pulse the owner found useful. Don't ask twice.

Reference files

• reference/data_sources.md — exact connector tool → metric mapping with fallbacks
• reference/thresholds.md — 🟢/🟡/🔴 cutoffs, tunable per owner
• reference/output_template.md — exact markdown structure; do not deviate
• reference/gotchas.md — known failure modes (QB states, Gmail auth, Slack write)

Using a tool that isn't listed

The connectors named in this skill are the tested paths, not a wall. If the owner wants this flow to use a tool that isn't connected or listed, offer build-connector — it checks the connector directory first and connects through Zapier otherwise, never hand-building against a raw API. Once the connection exists, the tool joins this skill like any other optional connector, under the same approval gates.