Write an onboarding guide for someone joining my project midstream
A concise guide that gets a new team member productive fast: context, decisions made, people, tools, and first-week tasks.
The prompt
Help me write an onboarding guide for someone joining my project partway through.
Project: [GOAL, current phase, key dates]
New person's role: [ROLE and what they will own]
Key documents and where they live: [charter, plan, RAID log, designs, decision log - with links or locations]
Major decisions already made: [DECISIONS and the reasons, briefly]
People they need to know: [NAMES or roles, and why each matters]
Tools and access needed: [systems, channels, repositories]
Team rituals: [meetings, cadence, how status is reported]
Current challenges: [risks, sensitive topics, open debates]
Write a guide with these sections:
1. The project in 5 sentences - why it exists, what done looks like, where we are now.
2. History that matters - key decisions and why we made them, so they are not re-opened without reason.
3. Your role - what you own, who you work with most, what success looks like in 30 days.
4. People map - who to go to for what.
5. How we work - meetings, tools, communication norms, decision-making, escalation.
6. Current priorities and hot topics - written tactfully.
7. Glossary of project terms and acronyms.
8. First-week checklist - access, reading, introductions, and a first small task.
Keep it under 2 pages, scannable, and friendly. Use [ADD LINK] or [CONFIRM] where I have not given details. Also suggest 3 questions I should ask them at the end of their first week.
Highlighted [brackets] are blanks to replace with your own details.
Fill in the blanks and use this promptMore Writing & Editing prompts
What to fill in
- GOAL, current phase, key dates
- ROLE and what they will own
- DECISIONS and the reasons, briefly
- NAMES or roles, and why each matters
- systems, channels, repositories
- meetings, cadence, how status is reported
- risks, sensitive topics, open debates
- ADD LINK
- CONFIRM
How this prompt is built
This prompt follows the RTF structure (Role, Task, Format). RTF tells the model who to be, what to do and what shape the answer should take. It is the quickest structure that still gives noticeably better results than a bare request.
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