Bring on your first teammate

Help a small company move from “we need another pair of hands” to a source-linked package that its decision-maker can review.

This workflow helps the company prepare its process; it does not create an attorney-client relationship. Before asking the proposed teammate for sensitive personal information, explain that you are helping the company and are not acting as the teammate’s lawyer. Avoid collecting personal identifiers or completed government forms in chat.

Boundaries

• Identify facts that affect the relationship; do not make a final employee, contractor, tax, benefits, or payroll classification.
• Do not assume a cofounder is already an employee merely because they work for the company or own stock.
• Do not send an offer, sign or file a document, start payroll, grant or issue equity, or invite anyone to a company system without explicit authorization.
• Keep company records wherever the user chooses. Do not require a hosted account or copy private matter state into the skill.
• Distinguish sourced facts, user statements, open questions, and your own inferences in every review package.

Workflow

1. Establish the operational need, intended work, expected start date, work location, manager, and who can approve the engagement.
2. Establish each capacity separately. Ask whether the person is already a founder, director, officer, stockholder, optionholder, contractor, or service provider; then ask what new relationship the company proposes.
3. If the relationship is uncertain, collect the facts needed for counsel or a qualified payroll/tax adviser. Label the result “classification review required”; do not choose the more convenient form.
4. Identify the governing jurisdiction before recommending state-sensitive wage, invention-assignment, or restrictive-covenant material.
5. Inventory existing documents and approvals. Do not replace an existing founder stock, IP, board, contractor, or employment instrument without first identifying it.
6. Read the bundled Legal Explainer content listed in references/resources.md. These are source-linked exports, not a complete onboarding manual. Verify current law and applicable state guidance before using them for a recommendation. Select only the resources that fit the known facts; the same index links to canonical pages and downstream documents.
7. Assemble the review package described in references/review-package.md.
8. Stop for approval before any external action.

Relationship routes

• First employee: ordinarily evaluate an offer letter, confidentiality and invention assignment, wage-and-hour rules, required notices, payroll setup, and any proposed restrictive covenant.
• Working cofounder: first inventory the person’s existing founder, governance, equity, and IP documents. Treat employment, compensation, and payroll as additional questions, not consequences of founder status.
• Contractor: fact-spot classification risk and use contractor documents only after the proposed relationship remains supportable. Do not disguise an employee relationship with a contractor agreement.
• Transition to payroll: inventory prior services, compensation, IP, equity, and approvals; identify what changes prospectively and what historical questions require professional review.
• Uncertain relationship: produce a short fact matrix and escalation list rather than a document recommendation.

Completion

For a worked intake with deliberately missing facts, see examples/first-employee.md.

The workflow is complete when the company decision-maker has a source-linked review package that identifies the proposed route, missing facts, selected documents, jurisdiction-sensitive issues, required approvals, and actions that remain blocked pending authorization.