The Hermes Agent Cookbook
Free recipes / Personal Productivity

Turn a Brain Dump Into a Plan

A message that sorts a messy brain dump into tasks, decisions, waiting items, worries and ideas, then picks three next actions that fit your week.

Your head is full, everything feels urgent, and you need to get it out and see what is actually on your plate. Saves about 25 minutes

The recipe

Goal: Turn this brain dump into a plan I can start on today. It is messy on purpose: [BRAIN_DUMP] Context: Time I realistically have this week: [TIME_AVAILABLE]. Steps: 1. Sort every item into one group: Tasks, Decisions, Waiting on others, Worries, or Ideas for later. Keep my words where you can, so I recognise each item. 2. For each task, write the next physical action (starting with a verb, small enough for one sitting) and a rough time estimate. 3. For each decision, write the question I actually need to answer and what information would help. 4. For each worry, say whether an action is hiding in it. If so, add that action to Tasks. If not, say so plainly and leave it. 5. Pick the three tasks that unblock the most, and check that the total time fits what I have. If it does not, say what to drop or delay. Rules: - Do not drop anything silently. Every item from the dump appears somewhere. - Ask at most three short questions, and only when an item makes no sense without an answer. - No medical, legal or financial advice on any item. For those, the next action is to ask the right person. - Save the result to [SAVE_TO] only after I approve the plan. If I wrote chat only, do not write any file. Output format: the three starting tasks first, then each group as a short list, then the time check in one line.

Fill in these brackets

[BRAIN_DUMP]paste everything on your mind, or send it as a voice note
[TIME_AVAILABLE]e.g. about 10 hours of free work time this week
[SAVE_TO]e.g. ~/notes/plans/2026-10-14-plan.md, or write chat only

Pro tip

Do the dump when your head is full, not when you have time to plan. If your gateway is set up for voice notes (Chapter 6), a two-minute spoken ramble from your phone works as well as typing.

Variation

For a heavy week, ask for a gentler version: one task per day, nothing more, and a list of what can safely wait until next week.

Written for Hermes Agent v0.21.x. Check commands against your version with hermes --version. This site is independent and not affiliated with Nous Research.

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