The Vacation Coverage Brief

What you'll need

• Who's covering and what might come up while you're gone
• Any AI chat assistant

The steps

1. Think through what's likely to come up while you're away.
2. Paste the prompt and fill in the brackets.
3. Walk your coverage person through it before you leave.
4. Leave a way to reach you only for true emergencies.

Write a coverage brief for someone covering my work while I'm on vacation.

Who's covering: [name]
Dates: [start] to [end]
What's likely to come up: [list — ongoing projects, regular tasks, expected messages]
What they can decide on their own vs. what should wait for me: [boundaries]
How to reach me for a true emergency only: [method, or "please don't unless X"]

Keep it clear and organized so they can actually use it as a reference, not just skim once and forget. End with a note thanking them.

Give me 3 quick questions to ask my coverage person when I'm back, to catch up on anything that came up.

What you'll get

A clear coverage brief that lets someone else confidently handle things — and lets you actually disconnect.

If it's not quite right

• Nothing regular ever comes up? Add "Keep this short — just the emergency contact info and one line of context."
• Multiple people covering different things? Add "Split this into sections by person."