How to use Anguardia
Anguardia turns AI research into clients. Read the first two sections once — about four minutes — and the rest of this page becomes lookup.
- I'm brand new
- I want the shortcuts
- I just need the prompt
- I have a call in ten minutes
- I need help from a human
Start here
Getting your first company in takes three steps and one paste. Do it once and the rest of the app has something to work on.
Copy the research prompt
Run it in any AI, then paste the reply with ⌘K
<!-- anguardia-dossier v1 --> # Dossier: Harborline…
Read what it will create, then confirm
Dossier
This will create
- 1 company — Harborline Freight
- 2 people — Maya Chen, Sam Ortiz
- 3 tasks — due tomorrow
- 1 outreach draft
⌘↵ Confirm
You now have a pipeline. Harborline is a company at status lead, Maya is a person, and three tasks are sitting on Today. Everything below is about what you do next.
The loop
One idea explains the whole app. Work moves around a loop, and each stage of the loop is a place in the sidebar. If you know where a company sits, you know what screen you are on and what the next action is.
- Capture⌘K, then Inbox
- Follow upToday
- DiscoveryDiscovery Mode
- ProposalCompanies
- ProjectProjects
- TestimonialProject Completion
- ReferralPeople
- Back to 01A referral is a new capture
Status is the pipeline
A company’s status — lead, contacted, discovery, proposal, won, lost — is its position in the loop. There is no second pipeline to maintain.
Capture never asks you to file
Anything goes into ⌘K raw. The first line becomes the title. You organise it later in Brain, or route it in Inbox — never in the moment.
Do a thing
Five recipes. Each one ends with exactly what Anguardia writes when you confirm, so nothing appears that you did not expect.
Work through a day
Today is six sections, read top to bottom. You are done when Start here and Due are empty.
- Start here
- The Top 3, each with the reason it is there. X to complete, or snooze it to tomorrow.
- Due
- Today's follow-ups and everything overdue, merged into one list.
- Watchlist
- Companies with no next step, tagged with why they stalled. This is where deals quietly die.
- Ahead
- Tomorrow, plus any guided workflow you paused mid-call.
- Undated
- Dateless tasks, with one-tap dates so they stop being invisible.
- Recent Brain captures
- The last few things you captured, so the newest thought is never more than a glance away.
Completed something by mistake? The message that appears afterwards can undo it for a few seconds.
Run a discovery call
Discovery Mode is a screen you keep open during the call. Every field fits one screen, so nothing needs scrolling while someone is talking.
- Start it from the company, or from the palette with
> start discovery. A timer runs from the moment it opens. - Type as they talk. Questions and a coverage checklist sit on the left; the right rail lists what finishing will create and updates live — so the follow-up it adds because you never asked about budget appears while you can still ask.
- Call cut short? esc pauses and leaves the draft under Ahead on Today. It saves continuously — nothing is ever lost. ⌘↵ finishes.
Finishing writes
- The discovery note
- The decision maker, created or linked
- Company → discovery
- Dated follow-ups
Type a contact who already exists at that company and it links to them instead of duplicating — and tells you so before you confirm. If two people there share the name, it asks you to pick.
Apply a playbook
A playbook is a checklist for something you do repeatedly. Applying it turns the ticked steps into real dated tasks.
- Open one and choose the company or project it applies to. Content and review checklists are standalone.
- Steps that produce a record — logging outreach, moving a status, scheduling the follow-up — arrive ticked and dated tomorrow. Steps that are judgement calls arrive off. Change a date with Today / Tmrw / +1w / None, or untick to skip.
- Confirm. Nothing is written before that, and applying the same playbook again creates a fresh set rather than editing the last one.
Confirming writes
- One task per ticked step, on Today
- One Brain item — the record of the run
Every task links back to that record, so months later you can see which playbook produced it.
Finish a project
Project Completion is the second guided workflow. It exists because the moment a project ends is the only moment a testimonial and a referral are easy to ask for — and the moment they are easiest to forget.
Start it from an active project and capture the before, the problem, the solution, the outcome, time saved and lessons. Like Discovery, it saves continuously and lists every output before writing anything.
Finishing writes
- Case study draft
- Post draft
- Testimonial request draft
- Final value recorded
- Project → completed
- Testimonial ask
- Referral ask
- Check-in, three months out
Nothing is ever sent. Every draft is yours to edit first.
Close the week
Review holds the Friday and month-end rituals. Five numbers make up the loop — captures, outreach, discovery, proposals, won — and each is shown against the same days a period earlier, so it answers whether things moved, not just how many there were.
The questions you get are prompted by whatever actually shifted. ⌘↵ or Save writes a journal entry to Brain with the numbers included.
Keyboard
Learn this one rule and the rest follows. Every list answers to the same keys, but only one list at a time holds the cursor. It is the obvious one — Start here on Today, the table on Brain and Companies — and Tab or a click moves it elsewhere. Whichever list holds it shows the keys it accepts beside its heading, so you never have to remember.
13 shortcuts shown
Anywhere
In any list
In the palette
In Discovery, Import and Review
Where things live
Nine screens, one line each — what the screen is for, not everything it can do.
- Today
Your day, top to bottom. Start here first; you are done when it and Due are clear.
- Inbox
Turn raw captures into work — route to a company, or import a dossier.
- Brain
Everything you ever captured. The cursor previews as it moves, so finding a half-remembered note is scanning, not opening rows.
- Companies
The pipeline itself: lead → contacted → discovery → proposal → won / lost.
- People
Contacts, and where referrals live.
- Projects
Delivery work you have won, each with an estimated value.
- Playbooks
Your repeatable checklists, plus the two guided workflows.
- Review
Friday and month-end. Every number against the period before it.
- Settings
Account and Google sign-in, timezone, export, sign out. Your signed-in email also shows in the sidebar footer.
Prompts & reference
Dossier v1 — the research prompt
Paste this into any AI with a company name. Paste the reply into ⌘K and it offers to import straight away — or use Import company research in Inbox. Full walkthrough: Prospect research prompt.
Research the company named below and produce a prospect dossier. Rules: - Output exactly the format below, including the marker comment on the first line. - Never invent. Leave any field blank if you cannot verify it from a real source. - Do not guess emails, phone numbers, or names. Blank is always better than plausible. - Keep Observations to what the sources actually say. Company: <company name> <!-- anguardia-dossier v1 --> # Dossier: <Company Name> ## Company - Industry: <industry> - Website: <url> - Location: <city or region> - Source: <cold | referral | inbound | research> ## People | Name | Role | Email | Phone | LinkedIn | |------|------|-------|-------|----------| ## Observations <free markdown: pain points, current software, manual workflows, the personalised observation for outreach> ## Suggested tasks - [ ] <task title> | due: <YYYY-MM-DD, optional> ## Suggested outreach <the first message, written for the decision maker, under 150 words>
Already have research in another shape?
Paste this prompt, then paste your notes underneath. The model restructures only — it never invents. Capture the reply and import as usual.
Restructure the research I paste below into Anguardia Dossier v1. Hard rule: restructure only — never invent. Fields not stated in the source stay blank. Do not guess emails, phones, or names. If Suggested outreach or Suggested tasks are not in the source, leave those sections empty (or omit the bullets). Keep Observations as free markdown from what is actually said. Output exactly this format (marker included): <!-- anguardia-dossier v1 --> # Dossier: <Company Name> ## Company - Industry: <industry> - Website: <url> - Location: <city or region> - Source: <cold | referral | inbound | research> ## People | Name | Role | Email | Phone | LinkedIn | |------|------|-------|-------|----------| ## Observations <free markdown: pain points, current software, manual workflows, the personalised observation for outreach> ## Suggested tasks - [ ] <task title> | due: <YYYY-MM-DD, optional> ## Suggested outreach <the first message, written for the decision maker, under 150 words> --- Paste research below this line:
On your phone
Safari: Share → Add to Home Screen. Chrome: menu → Install app.
The installed app opens straight to capture, with today’s due and overdue tasks underneath — Done, and the same few-second undo. No nav, no tables. It is for capturing on the move, not working the pipeline.
Timezone & backup
Your timezone lives in Settings and decides which day Today, due dates, overdue and greetings use.
Settings → Export everything gives you a zip of brain/, companies/, people/, projects/ and tasks.md — plain markdown, yours, readable without Anguardia.
Still stuck?
Email support@shiftmalam.com. Include what you were doing, what you expected, and what happened instead — one round trip beats a trail of one-line replies.