Some things cannot be sent as a message. Prepare takes the conversation you have been putting off and gives you an opening line, the points that have to land, and a calm answer to whatever comes back.
01
What it does
For the conversation you have to have out loud
Rewrite gives you a message to send. Prepare gives you something to say: a plan for a conversation that is going to happen in a room, on a call, or across a table.
Use it before the conversation, not during it.
It is for the ones you have been putting off for a week.
It costs one action from the same pool as Rewrite and Second Read.
02
What to give it
One conversation, not a whole relationship
The single biggest thing you can do for the quality of the plan is to narrow what you ask for. “I need to tell my manager I am leaving” produces something you can use. “Things have been difficult with my manager” does not.
Say what you need to say, as one sentence if you can.
Add context only where it changes the wording: history, constraints, what has already been said.
Name who it is with, if they are saved in People.
Two difficult things in one conversation usually means two plans.
03
What you get
An opening, the points, the hard part, and the pushback
The plan comes back in four pieces, roughly in the order you will need them. Each is written to be said rather than read out.
An opening line: the first sentence, which is the one that is hardest to start.
What must land: the points that cannot be left in the room unsaid.
The hardest sentence: the thing you are dreading, phrased so you could actually say it.
If they push back: likely responses, and a calm answer to each.
04
What Tildi keeps
None of it is stored
What you type into Prepare is treated like a draft, and Prepare is where people type the most sensitive things they will ever put into Tildi, so this matters more here than anywhere else.
The context and the plan are not added to Tildi’s application database.
Prepare plans do not go to Saved. Saved holds chosen rewrites only.
Copy anything you want to keep before you leave the screen.
05
Afterwards
When it turns back into a message
Plenty of prepared conversations end with something in writing: a follow-up, a summary, the thing you could not say in the room. That is a rewrite, and it is a separate action.
Copy the parts of the plan you want, then start in Write.
The intention for the follow-up is often not the one you prepared for.
A message you get back afterwards is a job for Second Read.