scope: rye-valley Rye Valley deciding how to run the Megaphone client engagement product.
- Date: 2026-09-01
- Decider(s): Michael Houck, Blake Stewart, Blake Emal
- Status: decided
Decision
Redesign Megaphone’s Hermes prompt format and add a thumbs up / thumbs down CTA. Change delivery: one short sentence + source link as the top-level Slack message, with full context in the thread. If a client thumbs up, Hermes responds in the thread and tags Blake Stewart so the client sees a human looped in.
Context
Clients (specifically Will Hinman and Pierce Freeman) explicitly said they are more likely to ignore prompts when they know it is a bot. Brentan Alexander is not engaging despite prompts matching exactly what he says he wants. Current format is sometimes a block of text that clogs the feed. Zero forced us to act: engagement cannot get worse if it is already near-zero.
Options Considered
- Reroute all prompts under Blake’s name (rejected): Not scalable; bad use of Blake’s time to be the nominal sender of every prompt.
- Send only one prompt per week (rejected): Reduces shots on goal too much; if the client disagrees with the one topic, the week is wasted.
- Educate + reformat (chosen): Add a clear education message when sharing dashboards explaining prompts are personalized to their content pillars, not generic trending news. Reformat to one-liner + link at top, thread for context. Add thumbs up/thumbs down CTA. Human (Blake) gets tagged on thumbs up.
Consequences
- Michael to update the Hermes prompt cron jobs (some were set up before the one-liner format directive and may be grandfathered into the old block format).
- Blake Stewart to include education note in his dashboard share-out messages to clients.
- Hermes tagging Blake on thumbs-up requires a workflow update.
Related meeting: [Weekly] Megaphone Sync - Sep 1, 2026
Follow-up (2026-10-01 monthly synthesis)
No evidence found in meetings, inbox, or decisions that the three Consequences actually shipped: no confirmation the Hermes prompt cron jobs were updated to the one-liner format, no record of Blake Stewart’s education note going out in a dashboard share, no record of the thumbs-up-tags-Blake workflow being built. Meanwhile Pierce Freeman and Brentan Alexander (the two clients cited as the reason for this overhaul) both churned this same month (Sep 8 and Sep 16/21 respectively) without any visible sign the new format reached them first. Status unconfirmed, not necessarily abandoned. Needs a direct check: did the cron jobs actually change format, yes or no.