Client Onboarding Workflow
The first 7 days after a client signs sets the tone for the whole engagement. Client Onboarding Workflow replaces the scattered welcome email and 'let me know when you're free for a kickoff' with a structured five-phase process that collects everything, sets expectations, and gets the first deliverable out fast.
What this skill does
A great onboarding does three things at once. It demonstrates professionalism so the client stops worrying they hired the wrong person. It collects every piece of information you need in one structured pass instead of drip-feeding requests over three weeks. And it establishes working norms — feedback rounds, response times, who decides what, how scope changes get handled — before anyone is annoyed enough that the conversation feels confrontational.
The workflow runs in five phases. Post-signature (within two hours) sends a warm welcome and the questionnaire that does the heavy lifting. Setup runs days one to three, where you process the questionnaire and prepare the kickoff agenda based on what they actually said, not a generic template. The kickoff itself is timed in five sections so it lands in 45 minutes instead of drifting for two hours. The first deliverable ships in week one wherever quality allows, because early wins build trust faster than anything else. The rhythm phase transitions the engagement from onboarding to ongoing work and asks the client directly what about the process they'd adjust.
The skill produces seven reusable assets, tailored to the service type — the welcome email template, the questionnaire (different for designers, developers, marketers, consultants), the project setup checklist, the kickoff agenda, the working norms document, the feedback template, and the post-kickoff summary format. These are the assets the user keeps and reuses for every future client, which is where the time savings compound.
It scales to engagement size. A £15K retainer gets the full five phases with personal touches. A £1,500 project gets phases one to four in lighter form. A £400 quick job gets an abbreviated process with embedded questions and a 15-minute alignment call instead of a formal kickoff. The skill won't impose a heavyweight process on light work — that creates friction, not professionalism — and it won't leave a £15K project to chance with a one-line welcome email either.
When this triggers
- ·Your onboarding is currently a welcome email, a Slack invite, and crossed fingers
- ·You keep chasing clients for brand assets, logins, and content two weeks into projects
- ·Kickoff calls run two hours and end without clear next steps
- ·You want a repeatable process you can hand to a VA or a junior team member
- ·Clients go quiet right after signing and you don't know how to break the silence
Example
Trigger
User: 'I'm a freelance brand designer. Onboarding is a mess — clients send assets late, kickoff calls drift, scope arguments by week three. Build me a process.'
Output
DAY 0 (within 2 hours of signing) — automated: · Welcome email (warm, names, dates, next steps) · Onboarding questionnaire (Typeform, ~25 min to complete) · First invoice DAY 1-3: · Review questionnaire — flag gaps before kickoff · Set up: Notion project, shared Drive, Slack channel · Send kickoff agenda 24 hrs before the call DAY 3-5 — KICKOFF (45 min, structured): 1. Confirm understanding (10 min — read brief back) 2. Present approach (10 min) 3. Working norms (10 min — feedback rounds, response times, decision-maker on their side) 4. Timeline + client dependencies (10 min) 5. Action items (5 min) DAY 7-14: first deliverable shipped early to build trust. ASSETS GENERATED (7): welcome email template, brand designer questionnaire (24 questions, grouped), kickoff agenda, working norms one-pager, feedback template, post-kickoff summary template, project setup checklist.
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- 167-line SKILL.md, ready to drop into ~/.claude/skills/
- Tested through 3 Karpathy-loop iterations (versions v1.0.0 → v1.3.0)
- Triggers automatically when relevant — no command to remember
- Lifetime updates as the skill is refined further
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