HouseChalk · Questions to Ask

A · What to ask, this week

Three questions, each one hanging off something that is actually open. Not a checklist and not a nag — if none of them is useful, none of them has to be asked.

The Hollis House

Worth asking Dave

Because of what's open right now, not because it's Monday.

When does the drywall go up in the kitchen? The cabinet color has to be signed off before it does, and it's the one decision holding the rest of the room. Ask him

Does the island electrical change push the rough-in? You asked for it on 11 May and it's still unsigned. Whatever it does to the schedule, the app has nowhere to put it, so the answer has to come from him. Ask him

Is 24 June still good for the final inspection? The last draw waits on it, and it's the only date between here and the keys. Ask him

Three, and there won't be ten. A list long enough to feel like homework is a list nobody opens twice.

B · He answered

The reply arrives as a message and is filed as an answer. One tap, and it is the coach that offers — you never have to know that a date needed catching.

Dave Marsh

Drywall

When does the drywall go up in the kitchen?

“Board goes up the week of the 2nd, so I need the cabinet color by the 28th at the latest. After that the painter is on a different house.”

Two things in that

A date you now have to hit, and a reason.

Keep them against the cabinet decision, and the kitchen stops being the room with the vague deadline.

Cabinet color, due 28 May.

Kept

Board goes up the week of 2 June Dave Marsh, 17 May · against Kitchen · cabinet package

It's still in the thread. It's also on the decision now, which is where somebody looks in three weeks.

C · Where the answer ends up

On the decision, beside the specification, in the same treatment as everything else that is settled. It stopped being a message the moment it was kept.

Kitchen

Cabinet package

Due 28 May Reed Millwork

What you have settled

ColorPewter Green, SW 6208

Door styleFlat panel, inset

HardwareStill open

What Dave told you

Drywall Week of 2 June
17 May

Color needed By 28 May, or the painter moves on
17 May

Nora hasn't seen the 28th yet. She is the one who wanted to look at the greens again in daylight.

D · What nobody asked, and should have

The delay named before it happens, hanging off a decision, which is the only place it can. Not the only real content on the page any more — frame A's questions turn out to have a real bank behind them too, just the wrong one (see the closing note).

Kitchen · cabinet package

If this one slips

Cabinets are built to order. Once you sign, the clock starts and it's six to ten weeks. And changing the color after that's a new order, not an amendment.

From the library, not from Dave. It's true of every cabinet package.

So the question is

If we sign the color on the 28th, when do they actually arrive? Six to ten weeks is a wide window and only he knows which end of it Reed Millwork is running at. Ask him

This one comes off a decision, and that isn't an accident

decision_library.delay_consequences is real and hangs off a decision. A delay named per phase would be content nobody has written and nowhere to store it.

A reply is an answer, not a message

That sentence is the whole page. When Dave says board goes up the week of the 2nd, that is a fact about the house. As a chat bubble it is gone in a week; kept against the cabinet decision it is beside the thing it affects, and the next screen that needs a drywall date already has one. Frame B draws the moment it changes category, and frame C draws where it lands — in the same settled-fact treatment as the specification, deliberately not as a bubble.
The product solves the easy half. ask_builder_sheet sends free text. Nothing suggests the question and nothing stores the reply as anything but a message. The capability deep dive calls this the paper binder's best idea and notes that nobody else does it — and it is cheap, because a question bank is content rather than schema.
Questions hang off decisions, never off dates. Every question in frames A and D comes from something actually open: an unsigned change order, a decision holding a room, an inspection the last draw waits on. A question generated because it is Monday is the thing that turns this into a nag.
Three, and there will not be ten. A list long enough to feel like homework is a list nobody opens twice, and the callout in A says so on the screen rather than only here.
Frame D has real content behind it, and it is not alone any more. decision_library.delay_consequences exists and is static library copy hanging off a decision, which is exactly what the frame draws and why the frame says from the library, not from Dave. _ds/FICTION.md is explicit that a delay named per phase would be content that has to be written and then stored — so this page does not draw one. Corrected 2026-08-10: frame A's questions are real content too — decision_library.suggested_questions is populated on 156 of 157 rows. What's true of both columns and worth knowing before either is built on: delay_consequences is 105-of-116 one mail-merged sentence, and 57 of 156 suggested_questions rows are the cost/schedule class the coach is forbidden to answer (12-ask, and OPEN_QUESTIONS.md Q32). Real is not the same as ready.
What is not built, plainly. No link from a question to an answer, and no storage for a reply that is not a message. Frame B's Keep it is the new capability, and it is one row: a question, an answer, who said it, and what it is against. Corrected 2026-08-10: this used to also claim there is no question bank; there is (above), and OPEN_QUESTIONS.md Q31 has the fuller correction.
Nora is named, and the nudge is about her. Sam is holding the phone, so Sam is you. The coach line in frame C says Nora has not seen the 28th — per _ds/FICTION.md, your partner is never a way to name a person on a screen.
Two page-scoped shapes. .q and .ans. The bubbles are .me-bubble and .coach-bubble straight from the sheet, the facts and tints and the resolution line are shared, and the nav dock sits on Ask rather than The house — the only page in the set where it does, because this is the one screen that lives behind that door.

Questions to Ask, and the Answer Kept

A reply is an answer, not a message