Hello Tropo #01 — 2026 Customer Event Plan

A concierge tutorial. Tropo T1 walks you through building your own activated project end-to-end. You'll end this tutorial with a real project in your Studio — your event, your workstreams, your first tasks — that you can begin working on tomorrow.

This is the first tutorial in the Hello Tropo series. More tutorials follow (Hello Tropo #02, #03, ...) — each one walks a different kind of project shape. This first one uses planning a customer event as the worked example, because most knowledge workers have something event-shaped on their plate.

Phase 0 — Welcome + Definitions

Tropo T1 sets the frame before any work starts. Read this once; you don't need to memorize it.

Tropo T1: Welcome back. Now that you've got your first agent set up and you've seen the conceptual frame, let me show you how to build something real in Tropo.

Your Studio has powerful work-management built in. It's called tropo-work. Think of it like Asana or Jira or Linear — task tracking, projects, plans, ownership — but designed from the ground up to be intuitive for your AI agents to read and act on. When your agents are organized, your work is organized.

Before we start, let me give you the quick frame. Three concepts will come up over and over:

Typed work-items. All work in Tropo is a typed work-item. By "typed," we mean each work-item has a defined purpose with instructions for how an agent is meant to use it. Work-items come in shapes — tasks, notes, design briefs, projects, project plans, decisions, releases. Each shape has its own attributes — things like created_by, date_created, status, owner — that you can search and filter on. Think of a work-item the way you'd think of a task in a task manager, but more flexible in how it can be used.

Capsules. The "type" definition for a work-item lives in a file called a capsule. If you hear your agent talk about "capsules," that's what they mean — the definition file that says what a task is, how a project behaves, what fields a decision needs. You don't author capsules; the kernel ships with the standard set, and they govern how work-items behave. You just author work-items.

The Tropo Vault. All your governed work lives in the Vault — the protected storage inside your Studio. Each work-item has a stable identifier (a UID) and lives at a known place. Agents can find anything by querying the Vault; humans navigate via project boards and the nav surface at 00-tropo-nav/.

That's the conceptual frame. If you want to go deeper before we build, here are the canonical references:

— the load-bearing read on tropo-work + capsule types
— why projects, not folders, are the organizational unit
— pipelines are reusable workflow templates; we'll use this concept in Phase 2
— the seven subsystems that organize Tropo

You don't have to read those right now. We'll learn each concept the moment we exercise it. But they're there when you want depth.

Where this tutorial is going.

In Phase 1, we'll frame your project — you'll name your event, pick your date, and write one sentence about the goal. Tropo will create your project work-item.

In Phase 2, we'll design the shape — what functional workstreams does your event need (Finance? Promotion? Hospitality?). Tropo will help you sketch a master pipeline.

In Phase 3, Tropo creates your project structure — one step, and your project gets a dashboard, a coordinating plan, and sub-projects for each workstream. About 10-15 work-items appear in your Studio at once.

In Phase 4, we'll walk what Tropo just created — the project board, the plan, the workstream sub-projects. Tropo explains the pieces and how they connect.

In Phase 5, we'll start working — you'll pick a workstream you want to begin with, and we'll name 2-3 real tasks together. Tasks you'd actually do. You'll end this tutorial with a project that's in motion.

Total reader effort: about 30 minutes if this is your first time through.

A note on the example.

The worked example for this tutorial is 2026 Customer Event Plan — a real activation in motion in your Studio that a marketing team is using to coordinate their annual customer event. It's in your Studio at the Hello Tropo project. Throughout the tutorial, I'll show you how that example handles each step, and then I'll ask you what YOUR version would look like.

If your project is also a customer event, the example translates directly. If your project is something different — a content series, a hiring search, a quarterly business review, a product launch — the shape of the work transfers. Pipelines, workstreams, tasks, project boards: these compose for any kind of coordinated work. The example gives you the shape; you bring the content.

Ready to start?

If yes, head to Phase 1.

If you'd rather come back later (no pressure — this tutorial isn't going anywhere), close the Studio and start fresh when you've got 30 minutes.

If you want to skip ahead and just look at the worked example without doing the build yourself, browse directly. You can run this tutorial later.

Phase 1 begins below.

Phase 1 — Frame your project

Tropo T1 helps you name your project, pick the event date, and write one sentence about the goal. By the end of this phase, you'll have a real project work-item in your Studio.

Tropo T1: Let's start with the simplest thing: naming your project.

A project in Tropo is a container for a body of work — it has a name, a description, an owner, and (when you build it out) a board that shows the state of the work at a glance. Projects are how Tropo organizes things by intent: "this is the work I'm doing on X." Different from a folder, which organizes by location.

If you want the deeper read on why projects replace folders in Tropo, see . For now, just know: projects are how your work gets a home.

Three questions to get your project framed:

What's the event? Hello Tropo's example named theirs "2026 Customer Event Plan." If you're planning an industry conference, a customer summit, a partner event, an internal kickoff — pick a name that you'd recognize if you saw it in your project list six months from now. What's your project's name?
When is it? The event date matters because workstreams will plan against it (some work is dated relative to the event — "two weeks before," "day of," "one month after"). Pick the calendar date your event happens. If it's not finalized, pick the target month. Hello Tropo's example used a date in late spring 2026.
What's the goal? One sentence. Not a paragraph. What does success look like for this event? Hello Tropo's example: "Engage 200 existing customers, generate 50 expansion conversations, debut the v2 product roadmap." Yours is whatever success looks like for you.

Once you've answered the three: Tell me your project name, the event date, and your one-sentence goal. I'll create the project work-item for you in your Studio.

What I'll create: a project entry with your name, your description (the goal), an owner field (you), and the calendar date. It'll show up in your Studio's navigation at 00-tropo-nav/00-tropo-active/ once we rebuild the nav (later in Phase 4).

When you've shared the three, we'll move to Phase 2.

Phase 2 — Design your shape

Tropo T1 walks you through identifying your workstreams — the functional lanes the event needs. By the end of this phase, you'll have a master pipeline that names how the work composes.

Tropo T1: Good. Your project has a name and a goal. Now we shape the work.

A pipeline in Tropo is a reusable template for how work flows. Think of it like a recipe — the same recipe can produce many dinners; the same pipeline can fire many runs. For your customer event, the pipeline says: "to execute an event like this, here are the workstreams that need to coordinate."

A workstream is one functional lane within the pipeline — a part of the work owned by a specific function or person. Workstreams are themselves pipelines (sub-pipelines), so each workstream has its own internal structure when you need it. But at the top level, a workstream is just: "this is the chunk of work owned by X."

For deeper reading, see .

The Hello Tropo example has six workstreams:

Finance — owned by finance-coordinator-agent. Budget, sponsorship contracts, vendor RFPs, spend tracking.
Booth — owned by booth-coordinator-agent. Booth design, shift assignments, on-site setup, tear-down.
Staffing — owned by staffing-coordinator-agent. Travel roster, customer meeting bookings, session coverage.
Hospitality — owned by hospitality-coordinator-agent. Reception venue, menu, guest list, execution.
Promotion — owned by promotion-coordinator-agent. Pre-event posts, day-of cadence, post-event recap.
Content — owned by content-coordinator-agent. Booth collateral, talk decks, demo scripts.

Six workstreams for an industry-conference-scale event. Your event might have fewer — a smaller customer summit might have just three (Logistics, Content, Promotion). Pick what your event actually needs.

Two questions to design your shape:

What functional lanes does your event need? List 2 to 6. Lean smaller for your first project; you can add more later. Hello Tropo had six because their event has on-site booth + hospitality components; yours might not.
Who or what owns each lane? Each workstream gets an owner — usually an agent class (like staffing-coordinator-agent), but if you're a solo operator running everything yourself, you can name yourself. For now, just give each workstream a name and an owner.

Once you've named the workstreams + owners: Tell me the list. I'll create the master pipeline for your project — it'll declare your workstreams as the structural shape of your event.

What I'll create: a pipeline work-item with your project's name, the list of workstreams, and the owner-class for each. This is the template that Phase 3 will fire.

When you've shared the workstream list, we'll move to Phase 3.

Phase 3 — Tropo creates your project structure

Tropo T1 takes the framing from Phases 1+2 and creates the full project structure in one step. By the end of this phase, your Studio has a real activated project — dashboard, plan, and sub-projects for each workstream — all in motion.

Tropo T1: This step is where Tropo does the structural work for you.

First, I'll convert your Phase 2 design — your workstream list and owners — into a pipeline work-item. Then I activate it.

When you activate a pipeline (fire it), Tropo doesn't just create the pipeline itself; it creates everything the pipeline implies. For your project, that means: the activation record (the run itself), a project-root that holds all the work, a coordinating plan that ties the workstreams together, and a sub-project for each workstream you named in Phase 2. All in one step. The word for this — one activation producing many work-items downstream — is cascade.

For the deeper read on activation + pipeline runs, see .

For your event, that's about 10-15 work-items appearing in your Studio at once. The activation record. The project-root. The coordinating plan. One sub-project per workstream (so 2 to 6 of those, depending on your Phase 2 shape). Plus an activation-root that links them all together.

That's a lot of work-items to create by hand. Tropo does it in one step, and it does it the same way every time. That's the point — you don't have to remember the structure; the pipeline knows the structure.

To create your project structure: Tell me you're ready, and I'll activate the pipeline.

What I'll create:

An activation record — the proof that this run happened, with a timestamp + your name as the activator
A project-root — the parent that holds all the work
A coordinating project plan — the artifact that lists what each workstream is responsible for + how they compose
One sub-project per workstream you named in Phase 2 — each one is itself activated and ready to receive work

After this lands, your project is structurally complete — every workstream has a home; every home has an owner; the plan ties them together.

When you say go, we'll move to Phase 4 to walk what just got created.

Phase 4 — Walk your substrate

Tropo T1 walks you through what just got created. By the end of this phase, you'll know where to find your project board, where the plan lives, and how the workstream sub-projects compose. No new work gets authored — this is the review pass.

Tropo T1: Phase 3 created a lot of work-items at once. I'll rebuild the nav so your new project surfaces in 00-tropo-nav/00-tropo-active/, and then we'll walk through what just landed so you know where everything is.

There are three things worth seeing now:

1. Your project board. Every Tropo project gets a board — a dashboard that shows the state of the work at a glance. The board regenerates from the substrate every time Tropo rebuilds the Studio, so it's always honest about what's actually going on. Yours is now at 00-tropo-nav/00-tropo-active/<your-project-slug>/board.md. Open it. (Boards are derived from project substrate; for the deeper read on how project boards fit into Tropo Work, see .)

What you'll see on the board: totals (how many work-items, how many done vs open), the list of sub-projects (your workstreams), and an "open tasks" table once you start adding tasks in Phase 5. Right now it's mostly empty because we haven't authored tasks yet — but the structure is there.

2. Your coordinating project plan. This is the work-item that names what each workstream is responsible for. It also lists acceptance criteria — what "done" looks like for each workstream. The plan composes against the master pipeline that Phase 3 fired; it's the artifact that says "these workstreams + this coordination = the event ships."

For the deeper read on how project plans work in Tropo's work substrate, see .

3. Your workstream sub-projects. Each workstream you named in Phase 2 is now its own sub-project. Each sub-project has its own activation record + its own board + (eventually) its own tasks. They're all linked back to your project-root, so navigating from the top down works: project-root → coordinating plan → workstream sub-project → workstream's tasks.

Try this: Open your project board. Then click into one of the workstream sub-projects (Finance, Promotion, whichever interests you most). Notice the same structure repeats — every project has the same shape. Once you know the shape, you can navigate any Tropo project the same way.

Ask me anything about what you see. Walking the substrate is the moment to develop intuition; questions are welcome.

When you've walked it and feel oriented, we'll move to Phase 5 — starting real work.

Phase 5 — Start working

Tropo T1 invites you to pick a workstream to begin with and name your first 2-3 tasks. By the end of this phase, your project has real tasks in motion that you can begin tomorrow. The tutorial ends here; from this point forward, you're working in your Studio.

Tropo T1: Your project has structure. Now let's put real work in it.

A task in Tropo is the smallest unit of work — a thing one person (or one agent) does. Tasks have an owner, a status (open, in-progress, done), and a unit-of-work description. Tasks live in workstream sub-projects; the project board surfaces them as a table so you can see what's open at a glance.

Tasks are one of many work-item shapes — alongside projects, plans, decisions, notes, design briefs. For the canonical reference on the full set of work-item shapes, see . For now, just know: tasks are how work gets named so people (and agents) can do it.

Pick a workstream to start with. Look at the workstreams you created in Phase 2. Which one feels most concrete — like you know exactly what needs to happen first? Often that's the one with the closest deadline, or the one where you already have a plan in your head.

For your project, you'll name the first tasks yourself. They're YOUR work; you know what they are. (If you want a richer reference for how Hello Tropo's workstreams generated their own tasks, you can browse the Promotion workstream in the example after the tutorial — it's a teach-by-example pattern worth seeing once you're oriented.)

Once you've picked a workstream: Name 2 or 3 tasks you would actually do in that workstream this week or next. Not all the work — just the first few. Things like:

"Confirm event venue contract"
"Draft the agenda outline"
"Send save-the-date to top 50 accounts"
"Get budget approval from finance"

Real things. Specific enough that you'd recognize them as done when they're done. I'll create the task work-items for you.

What I'll create: 2-3 task entries in the workstream sub-project you picked. Each task has your name as owner, status:open, and the unit-of-work description you gave me.

That's the tutorial.

When the tasks land, you have a real project in your Studio. Not a copy of Hello Tropo — yours. Your event, your workstreams, your first tasks. You can keep going from here:

Add more tasks (in any workstream; same pattern as the 2-3 you just named)
Move tasks through statuses as you do the work (open → in-progress → done)
Commission agents for each workstream when you're ready to delegate (look at how Hello Tropo's finance-coordinator-agent, promotion-coordinator-agent, etc. operate as references)
Watch the project board update as work progresses
When your event ships, mark the project done + write a brief retrospective

Where to go next:

Want to bring in existing work? The Welcome Playbook's Phase 4 covers manual import. Go there.
Want to learn more about how Tropo composes for different shapes of work? Hello Tropo #02 (and beyond) will walk other use cases. Watch for them.
Have questions about anything you saw? Ask me. The substrate is browsable; I can walk you through any artifact you want to understand more deeply.

Welcome to working in Tropo.

*Hello Tropo #01 — 2026 Customer Event Plan | v0.2 draft | Authored by Argus A68 2026-05-17 | R4 absorption by Argus A69 2026-05-17 (sa.cold-boot-194 PARTIAL → all 5 recs absorbed in-cycle per fix-on-see) | Composes with v1.35.0 Hello Tropo substrate as worked example | Governed by + + *