A status report tells you what people say is happening. A stall report tells you what has not moved. This is the second one.
It runs every weekday morning on the projects you name, reads the places the work actually lives, and hands you what stopped moving plus one owner per next action. Ours found a client project that had sat still for six days with a deadline nine days out. The whole task list was rebuilt within an hour of it landing in writing.
Step 1
Copy this prompt
Copy this prompt into Viktor
Viktor, build me a 9am Stall Report.
Every weekday at 9am, send me one short report on the projects I name below. Before you build it, ask me: which projects to watch, where the work is tracked, which people and email threads count as activity, and who I want named as the owner of each next action.
The report must show, for each project:
- what actually changed in the last 24 hours
- what has not been touched in 3+ days, with the number of days
- what is overdue, and who owns it
- one next action with one named owner
Two rules: separate "not done" from "not recorded in the tool" and tell me which it is. And never say a project is fine just because nothing is overdue.
Under 150 words per project. Bullets, no preamble. Show me a sample first, then set it to run every weekday at 9am.
Step 2
Answer the four questions
It will ask. Answer specifically, because vague answers are the whole reason these reports get ignored.
- Which projects. Name them. Two or three, not everything you own. A watch list of twelve becomes wallpaper.
- Where the work is tracked. Your project tool, and the board or list inside it.
- What counts as activity. The people involved, the client email thread, the chat channel. Movement in conversation is not movement in delivery, and you want both reported separately.
- Who owns next actions. Real names. A next action without an owner is a wish.
Step 3
Know what a good one looks like
Thu Sep 10 · Website consolidation: blocked on you
- Build work moving: pages 1 to 7 now in progress with the developer.
- Still overdue since Monday: four items, all yours. The approved content docs are the blocker; your forward reached the team with no attachments.
- Due today 5pm: three items with the project manager. No client email or chat in the last 24 hours.
Next: re-send the approved docs to the team today.
Short, dated, specific, and it ends with one instruction. If yours reads like a summary of a dashboard, it is not working yet.
Step 4
The two rules that keep it useful
Separate "not done" from "not recorded." Our first version reported on what the project tool said, and the tool was behind reality. Delivered work sat marked Open, so the report flagged shipped work as stalled and effectively accused the team of doing nothing. Point an automation at a system nobody maintains and you have not built visibility, you have built a confident rumor.
Never let it say things are fine. "Nothing overdue" is not health. Deadlines get moved. Ask for what has not been touched, in days, because that number cannot be renegotiated.
Reply to the first few reports telling it what was wrong or missing and it corrects itself for the next morning. Mine took about a week to get genuinely good.
Then
Make it shorter than you think
My early ones ran 400 words per project and I skimmed them. I told it to cut to a headline, three bullets and a next action. I read every one now. A report you skim is a report you do not have.
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