A second brain that knows nothing is just a brain. The first week is about closing that gap — and it takes less than people assume, because you’re not filling in a profile. You’re starting the threads it will keep pulling.
Four things, in order of how much they pay back.
1. Your threads
People live in a handful of long-running threads: work, health, money, family, a relationship, a kid’s schooling, the project that won’t die. Those aren’t topics — they’re the things you keep returning to, and they’re what makes advice about you rather than about anyone.
Say them out loud, roughly. I’m trying to change jobs this year. My mother’s health is the thing I worry about most. I’m behind on money and avoiding looking at it properly.
You don’t need detail yet. Naming the threads is what lets everything you mention later attach to something instead of floating.
2. Your never-dos
This is the highest-value five minutes of the week, and almost nobody does it unprompted.
Tell it what it must never do. Never message this person. Never book anything without asking. Never spend over this without me. Never bring up that subject in the morning.
These aren’t preferences that get weighed against convenience — they’re rules it can’t cross. That distinction is the whole reason it’s safe to let something act for you at all: a prompt is a request, a permission is law. Set them early, while you’re deciding how much rope to give, rather than after something happens you didn’t want.
You also own the depth dial — off, light, normal, deep — and off is genuinely respected.
3. One real commitment
Pick one thing you actually intend to do and tell it. The gym on Tuesdays. The email you owe your accountant. The call to your father you keep postponing.
One is enough, and one specific commitment teaches you more about the product than an hour of exploring. You’ll see the loop: it becomes a Plan, work gets scheduled behind it, it comes back at the right moment, and — this is the part worth watching — if it fails, it says so rather than quietly closing the tab. That honesty is the thing you’re really evaluating in week one.
4. One connector, when you’re ready
Not all of them. One — usually calendar or mail.
A connector is where Aura stops guessing and starts seeing: your actual week, the reply you’re waiting on, the deadline you forgot. It’s also the point where you’re handing over real access, so do it deliberately, one at a time, when you can see what you get for it. Part three is entirely about this.
What not to bother with
Don’t write a biography. A wall of background on day one is mostly wasted — what’s useful is the thread you’ll actually return to, and that surfaces naturally within a fortnight.
Don’t test it with trick questions. You’ll learn what it does with a fake task, which is nothing like what it does with a real one.
Don’t try to be comprehensive. Memory builds from ordinary use. The first week is about starting the threads, not finishing them.
How you’ll know it’s working
Somewhere in week two, something arrives that you didn’t ask for and did need — a nudge about the commitment, a piece of research on the decision you mentioned once, a reminder that the thing you were waiting on has landed.
That’s the moment the product stops being a chat window. Until then it’s mostly you talking, which is normal and not a verdict — you’re seeding threads, and threads take a beat to pay.