context is now underway's brain

the questions underway asks are only as good as what it knows about your day. a first question about the call that overran, the revert at four or the payment that landed is a question you can answer on camera. how was your day is not. the difference is the tools it reads, and rich calls that the intelligence behind the app.

so the context page now shows it, and for your first five episodes it shows nothing else. it is called underway's brain.

six big squares, and everything else

the page opens on one line: underway reads the tools you already work in, so the questions know about your day. under it are six big squares, each with the tool's own mark, its name and what it brings in a few words. they are the tools most founders already use, and the cheapest to connect.

• google calendar, for today's meetings: titles, times and who was invited, never what was said.
• your inbox, for any email you forward to your own underway address. nothing else in your mailbox is read.
• github, for commits, merged pull requests and closed issues, from the repositories you pick.
• stripe, for payments, through a read-only key. underway can never move money.
• fathom, for what was said in the meetings your notetaker sat in. it feeds the questions and never the footage.
• plausible, for traffic, so a day the numbers moved is a day the interview can ask about.

the seventh square is everything else. it holds the small marks of every other tool underway can read, with how many there are in the corner: zoom, fireflies, posthog, linear, whop, vercel, argos, meta ads, search console, kit and beehiiv. press it and they open as a grid, each one a button of its own.

press a logo, and it explains itself

press any square and a panel opens right underneath its row, on the same page. it says two things in two lines: what underway reads from that tool, and how it shows up in an episode's questions. then it gives you the way to connect it, there and then.

• a tool you sign in to, like google calendar, github or zoom, has a connect button. it takes you to the tool's own screen and brings you back to context with the panel still open.
• a tool that takes a key, like stripe, plausible or kit, has the key box right there, with where to find the key. it is checked before it is kept, so a wrong key fails in front of you, not quietly a week later.
• your inbox shows its address, with copy, and share where your browser has it.

one panel is open at a time. the cross closes it, and so does escape. nothing on the page sends you to account: the card in the panel is the same one account uses, so its switch, its repository list for github and its choices for meta ads and search console are all there.

once a tool is connected its square carries a tick and what its last read found, a number where there is one, and how long ago. a tool you connect from everything else gets a big square of its own, so what feeds your day is always in sight.

why the rest waits

context used to open on a dark header of numbers: seventy five collected, twelve ticked, eight sources. to someone on episode two that means nothing, and neither does a tray of forty commits with a switch beside each. they matter once you have a few episodes behind you and know what the director does with them.

so for your first five episodes the brain is the whole page. the numbers, today's tray and add to today arrive after your fifth episode, along with everything else the simpler start holds back. a line at the foot of the page says so, with show everything if you want it all now. nothing stops working in the meantime: the day is still read, the director still ticks what matters, and the questions are still written from it.

after your fifth episode the page is as it was, with the brain as its first section. the same squares, the same panels. folded, its head is a row of the marks of what is connected, and pressing it opens the brain.

on the phone

the phone's context screen is the same: the same squares in the same order, everything else, and a panel under the row you press with the same two lines. signing in to a tool or pasting a key needs a browser, so connect opens the web already signed in, straight to the tool's sign-in, or to that tool's panel on context. close the browser and the square has its tick. the inbox needs no browser: its address is there to share or copy.

see what underway's brain can read. open context.