Welcome to NerdOS, Trent.
This is your walkthrough for today's onboarding and the 7 days that follow. It's written so you can read it top to bottom in about 10 minutes, or jump to any section from the menu on the left. We'll go through it together on our call.
What NerdOS actually is.
NerdOS is a working operating system for your work day. It connects to Gmail, Calendar, Slack, and Plaud, learns how you actually work, and surfaces the handful of things that genuinely need you right now — with drafts already written in your voice.
It's not a to-do list, and it's not a chatbot. It watches what you actually do — who you email back fast, who you leave on read for three days, what you agree to in meetings, what drains you — and builds a picture of your operating model. Then it uses that picture to draft, triage, and remind you of things the way you'd actually do it.
Most AI tools give you more to look at. NerdOS gives you less, on purpose. The goal isn't a fuller inbox — it's a shorter list of things only you can answer, with the answers 80% drafted.
How this manual is structured
- Part 1 (today) — Connect accounts, run the Quick Voice Framework, say hi in Slack.
- Part 2 (this week) — Five minutes a day of "dating week" questions so NerdOS learns you deeper.
- Part 3 (ongoing) — How you use the system day-to-day and how ideas/feedback get captured.
Today's goal: 15 minutes to live.
By the end of our call today, you'll be logged in, connected, and looking at your own dashboard. Everything else is the system working in the background.
NerdOS is still in Google's testing mode (standard for new apps — full verification is a 4-to-6-week process). You'll see a screen that says "Google hasn't verified this app." That's expected. Click Advanced → Go to nerdos.us (unsafe) and continue. We'll be in verified/production mode well before our 30-day review.
Connect your accounts.
NerdOS pulls signal from the places you already work. Today we connect the essentials. You can add more from Settings → Integrations whenever you want.
Google Workspace Required today
This is the big one. Connecting Google gives NerdOS read access to Gmail and Calendar, and permission to create Gmail drafts on your behalf (it never sends without your click).
- Go to app.nerdos.us and sign up with your Greeley Hat Works Google account. Same account you get your work email on.
- Accept the "unverified app" screen. Click Advanced, then Go to nerdos.us. This goes away when we complete Google's verification.
- Grant the scopes NerdOS asks for. Gmail read, Gmail draft create, Calendar read. You can revoke any of these at any time from your Google account settings.
- You'll land back in NerdOS on the setup wizard. Next step begins automatically.
Plaud Recommended today
Plaud recorder transcripts become NerdOS meeting notes. Upload a transcript once to test the path, then every future recording flows in automatically.
- In Settings → Integrations, find the Plaud card and click Upload transcript.
- Drop in any recent Plaud
.txtor.mdfile. - It shows up in your Meetings feed within seconds.
Slack Optional today, required by next session
Slack is where NerdOS talks to you when you're away from the dashboard — briefings, nudges, quick captures. See Section 06 for how we'll set up your private channel.
The Settings → Integrations dashboard shows Google as healthy (green), and you've uploaded one Plaud transcript to prove the path works.
The Quick Voice Framework.
Five minutes. Five phases. One conversation with the system so it has something to work with before it starts reading your actual email.
The Quick Voice Framework is NerdOS's fast-path onboarding. It's a 5-phase wizard that lands you in a working dashboard in under 15 minutes. It is not the deep one. Think of it like first impressions. It gets us 70% of the way there, and the 7-day dating week that follows (next section) gets us the last 30%.
What the 5 phases do
| Phase | What happens | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Connect | Hook up Google (required), Slack (optional) | Gives the system the signal sources it'll use |
| 2. Style | 3 quick questions about your role, writing style, and response norms | Seeds the draft engine so early replies don't sound generic |
| 3. Review | NerdOS pulls your recent inbox, proposes categories it sees (clients, vendors, newsletters, etc.) | You approve or edit — this becomes the triage foundation |
| 4. Discover | A single Claude call analyzes 15 recent inbound + reply pairs, returns confidence + starter rules | Replaces the old "swipe through 50 emails" flow. ~20 seconds instead of 20 minutes. |
| 5. Ready | Confidence summary, launch button into your dashboard | You're live. Nothing more to do. |
The Quick Voice Framework runs on what you say about yourself plus a small sample of your real email. It's accurate but shallow. The dating week (next section) runs on what you actually do over 7 days of real work — that's where the compounding happens.
What you'll be asked
The wizard keeps questions short and concrete. No essays. Examples:
What's your role at work?
Example: "Operations Manager at Greeley Hat Works, owner-adjacent, runs the day-to-day."
How would you describe your email style?
Example: "Warm but direct. Short paragraphs. No corporate-speak. Sometimes I joke."
If something feels wrong
Don't agonize over the answers. You can edit every single one later in Settings → Operating Model and the dating week will surface contradictions automatically. First pass is supposed to be fast, not perfect.
Your 7-day dating week.
Five minutes a day for seven days. This is where NerdOS actually learns you — not from a sit-down interview, but from short daily sessions grounded in what you did the day before.
Starting tomorrow, a new module appears on your Today view called Operating Model. It surfaces 3–5 cards per day. Each card is either a bootstrap question (something we need to know) or an observation NerdOS made overnight by scanning your outbound email, calendar, and meeting notes.
The four layers we're building
What a card looks like
OBSERVATION · RELATIONSHIPS
You replied to Mike at Blakemore within 12 minutes three times this week. Is Mike a high-priority relationship?
What happens on Day 7
You get a full-screen "reveal" of your operating model. Four layers, filled in with real facts grounded in real behavior. You can edit, reorder, or delete any fact. Then you pick a mode:
- Discovery mode — The Operating Model module stays visible. You'll get roughly one new card per day as NerdOS spots new patterns.
- Ambient mode — The module hides itself. Facts keep updating silently in the background, but the surface stays out of your way.
The alternative is a 45-minute sit-down interview. Everyone hates those and they produce self-report data (often wrong). Daily 5-minute sessions grounded in yesterday's real activity produce observed data — and you never lose a morning to it.
Slack is your second brain.
Over the coming weeks, Slack becomes the main surface you interact with NerdOS through when you're not on the dashboard. Today we set up the plumbing. Next session we get sophisticated.
The setup we're doing today
- Install the NerdOS Slack app into your workspace. From Settings → Integrations, click Connect Slack. Slack will ask you which workspace to install into — pick the Greeley Hat Works one.
-
Create your private briefing channel.
In Slack, create a new private channel named
#trent-nerdos. Private means only you can see it. This is your personal NerdOS space. -
Add the NerdOS bot to that channel.
In
#trent-nerdos, type/invite @NerdOSand hit enter. -
Send me the channel name.
Text or Slack-DM me
#trent-nerdos(or whatever you named it). For the first couple of weeks I'll wire it up on my end — the user-facing channel picker is on the 4-week roadmap, so until then this is a 30-second handoff.
This channel is going to be a running stream of half-thoughts, draft replies, voice memos, and pattern nudges. Some of it will be useful. Some will be noisy while we tune it. None of it belongs in a shared space. Keep it private, keep it single-user, and we'll open up wider channels later when we know what's worth sharing.
What your channel will start doing this week
- Morning briefing: the 3–5 things that actually need you today, with drafts attached.
- Quick-capture: type a thought, voice memo, or link into
#trent-nerdosand it gets routed to the right module (task, idea, friction log). - Nudges: "Jesse hasn't heard back from you in 6 days, here's the draft I already wrote."
What we're building for you in Slack over the next 4–8 weeks
You're going to be a heavy Slack user — that's obvious already. So the roadmap bends toward that. Previews of what we'll wire up together:
What NerdOS can do right now.
Everything on this page is deployed to production and has been end-to-end tested. You can use all of it from the moment you log in.
What's on the roadmap.
Here's what's coming and roughly when. Order can shift based on what you find most useful — the point of monthly check-ins is to reprioritize.
| Capability | When | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Slack voice capture + inline edits | Weeks 2–4 | Because you're a heavy Slack user. This is the first wave of custom work for you. |
| End-of-day executive summary | Week 2 | One message at 5pm: what closed, what's pending, what slipped, what's next. |
| Fireflies + Fathom meeting import | Month 2 | So every meeting source flows in, not just Plaud/Granola. |
| Calendar agent | Month 2–3 | Meeting prep briefs, smart scheduling, conflict detection that knows your rhythm. |
| iPad/iPhone home-screen app | Month 3+ | One tap from your home screen to today's dashboard. |
| Proactive outreach nudges | Week 4 | "You haven't emailed Jim in 37 days — here's a warm reconnect draft." |
| Bookmarking + saved views | Month 2+ | Save searches, filtered views, and specific threads for fast recall. |
| Verified Google OAuth (no more "unverified app" screen) | 4–6 weeks | Security assessment is underway. This disappears once Google completes review. |
Your subscription includes one new feature each month, and that feature is defined with you, not at you. Monthly check-in: we look at what's friction, what you're working around, what you wish existed — and that becomes next month's build. No change orders. No surprise invoices.
Capturing ideas as we go.
You'll have ideas in the first week. Some will be brilliant, some will be impossible, some we've already built and need to surface better. All of them are useful. Here's where they go.
Three channels, in order of preference
-
Drop it in
#trent-nerdosprefixed withidea:Example: idea: could we auto-tag emails that mention specific trucks? — Reu sees these within the hour. The system will also start auto-categorizing and prioritizing your ideas once the capture pipeline is live. -
Voice memo in Slack.
Faster when you're driving or between meetings. Tap the mic in
#trent-nerdosand talk. Transcription + routing handled for you. - Text or email Reu directly. For anything sensitive or urgent. reu@localnerds.co · 970.800.1295.
What "feedback" actually means to us
The system is in build mode. Every time you tell us "this isn't right", "I wish it did X", or "why is it doing Y", it makes the system better. Don't self-censor. If something feels off, it probably is — and even if the fix is non-trivial, we'd rather know now than find out in month 3.
Everything you flag goes into a shared tracker. We review it at the monthly check-in and rank it against what's already planned. Your in-the-wild feedback bumps priority — especially in the first 30 days when we're calibrating.
Support & what happens next.
You have a real person. That person is Reu. Here's how to reach him and what the rhythm of our next few weeks looks like.
How to reach me
| reu@localnerds.co | |
| Phone / text | 970.800.1295 |
| Slack | Drop it in #trent-nerdos — fastest for NerdOS stuff |
| Office hours | Mon–Fri, 8am–6pm MT. Outside that I may not see it until the next morning. |
Rhythm for the next 30 days
| When | What |
|---|---|
| Today | Onboarding call, Quick Voice Framework, first Slack setup pass. |
| Days 1–7 | Dating week. Five minutes a day. Day 7 you get your full operating model reveal. |
| Day 10 | Check-in call (30 min). Sanity check the operating model, flag what's off. |
| Days 10–20 | Slack deep-dive sessions. This is when your channel starts doing real work. |
| Day 30 | Full review. What's working, what's friction, what we build next month. |
Treat the first 30 days like test-driving a custom car that's still getting tuned. If the clutch feels off, tell me. If the stereo's too loud, tell me. If you want it to do something it doesn't — tell me. The whole point is that this fits you, not a generic template. Nothing you say is too small, and nothing is off the table.