People Supercube

What it is

In a company without an HR team, people administration happens to whoever is nearest: the office manager runs onboarding from a checklist, the founder reads CVs at midnight, leave lives in a shared calendar, and the review cycle happens the year someone remembers. The employee record is a folder of PDFs and a spreadsheet, and the question "who has completed their safety training" takes an afternoon.

The People Supercube installs a people function with the administration done by agents and the judgement kept by managers. It seeds tables for roles, employees, candidates, applications, interviews, offers, onboarding tasks, leave, reviews, training and documents. It declares agents that write job descriptions from the role profile, screen applications against the criteria the hiring manager set, schedule interviews, assemble offers, run onboarding checklists, administer leave and absence, prepare review cycles and keep the record complete. It publishes the apps people use: the careers pipeline, the new-starter portal, the leave calendar, the review workspace and the employee directory.

After installation, a hiring manager opens a role. The Recruiter agent drafts the job description from the role profile and the brand voice, posts it to the connected job boards on approval, screens each application against the manager's criteria with a short rationale, and offers interview slots from the panel's calendars. The manager decides who to interview and who to hire. The Onboarding Coordinator agent turns the offer into a start plan: contract for signature, equipment ordered through the Operations Supercube, accounts requested, first-week schedule, and a buddy assigned. On day one the new starter's portal knows their name.

Who it is for

Companies of 10 to 500 people without a full HR team, or with one or two HR generalists who spend their time on administration. Roles that use it are hiring managers, whoever owns HR, line managers, every employee for leave and reviews, and the finance manager for payroll inputs.

Agents

Agent	Role	Owns	Harness preference
Recruiter	general	Job descriptions, posting, screening, scheduling, candidate communication	Claude Code
Onboarding Coordinator	general	Offers to start plans; checklists; accounts and equipment requests; first-month check-ins	Claude Code, then Hermes
HR Administrator	general	The employee record; leave and absence; contract changes; document expiry; payroll inputs	Claude Code
Performance Partner	general	Review cycles, objective setting, feedback collection, development plans	Claude Code, then pi
People Analyst	analyst	Headcount, attrition, time to hire, leave patterns, pay equity reports	Claude Code

Data

Table	Purpose	Key fields
roles	Role profiles: purpose, responsibilities, criteria, pay band	title, department, level, criteria, band, reports_to
employees	The employee record	name, role, manager, start, status, contract_type, location, work_email
employee_private	Sensitive fields, separate table with restricted access	employee, date_of_birth, address, bank, right_to_work, emergency_contact, medical
candidates	People who applied or were sourced	name, email, source, consent, status
applications	One per candidate per role	candidate, role, applied_at, screen_score, rationale, stage, decision
interviews	Scheduled interviews and feedback	application, panel, at, kind, feedback, recommendation
offers	Offers made and their status	application, salary, start, terms, approver, status, signed_at
onboarding_tasks	Checklist items per new starter	employee, task, owner, due, status
leave	Leave and absence requests and balances	employee, kind, from, to, days, status, approver
reviews	Review cycles and each employee's review	cycle, employee, objectives, self, manager, rating, plan
training	Training assigned and completed, with expiry	employee, course, required, completed_at, expires_at
documents	Contracts, policies, certificates, with expiry	employee, kind, file, signed_at, expires_at
payroll_changes	Changes to send to payroll each period	employee, period, change, amount, approved_by

Added a stage column to contacts.

Workspace

Sales

contacts

deals

pricing.md

Launch

launch-page.md

contacts3 rowsreadwriteschema

name	stage	created by
Ada Lovelace	lead	Analyst
Grace Hopper	customer	GGrace
Linus Torvalds	lead	Builder

Data sources

• Job boards and applicant tracking. Applications from LinkedIn Jobs, Indeed, or an existing ATS such as Workable or Greenhouse, mirrored if the company already uses one.
• Email and calendar. Panel availability and interview scheduling through Google Workspace or Microsoft 365; candidate correspondence in a shared recruiting mailbox.
• HR and payroll systems. If the company runs BambooHR or Personio, the employee record mirrors from there; payroll changes go to Xero Payroll or Gusto.
• Signature. Signed contracts and policy acknowledgements from DocuSign.
• Uploads. CVs, certificates, right-to-work documents, existing policies; extracted into the record by the HR Administrator.
• Other supercubes. Equipment from Operations, cost centres from Finance, capacity planning from General Management.
• Derived. Screening scores and rationales, leave balances, review summaries, headcount and attrition analytics.

Apps

• Careers pipeline. Roles and their applications by stage with screening rationale and interview feedback. Used by hiring managers and HR.
• Interview scheduler. Panel availability and candidate slots; confirmations. Used by HR and panels.
• New-starter portal. The plan for the first month, documents to sign, people to meet, a place to ask. Used by new starters.
• Leave calendar. Request, approve, see who is out, balances. Used by everyone.
• Employee directory. Who does what, reports to whom, where they sit. Used by everyone.
• My record. An employee's own details, documents and training, editable within policy. Used by everyone.
• Review workspace. Objectives, self-review, manager review, calibration view. Used by employees and managers during a cycle.
• People dashboard. Headcount, hiring, attrition, leave, training compliance. Used by leadership and HR; feeds General Management.

We need a CRM for the sales team, with a deal pipeline.

Published Sales CRM. It uses the contacts and deals tables.

Sales CRMv3 · publishedread-write

Lead2

Northwind$8k

Initech$5kA

Qualified1

Globex$24kG

Won1

Acme$40k

Connectors

Group	Target systems	Flows in	Flows out
Job boards and ATS	LinkedIn Jobs, Indeed, Workable, Greenhouse	Applications, candidate details	Job postings, stage updates, rejections on approval
Calendar and email	Google Workspace, Microsoft 365	Availability, correspondence	Interview invitations, candidate emails, onboarding schedules
HR systems	BambooHR, Personio	Employee record, where the external system is the record	Changes on approval
Payroll	Xero Payroll, Gusto	Pay periods, confirmations	Approved starters, leavers, changes, absence
Signature	DocuSign	Signed status	Contracts, policy acknowledgements
Identity and equipment	Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, via the Operations Supercube	Account status	Account and equipment requests
Chat	Slack, Microsoft Teams	Leave requests, questions	Reminders, welcome messages, review-cycle nudges

Process automations

Role to shortlist Trigger: a hiring manager opens a role. Steps: the Recruiter drafts the job description from the role profile, posts it on approval, screens each application against the criteria with a rationale and a score, and updates the pipeline. Checkpoint: the manager approves the posting and decides who to interview; the agent's score is advice. Output: a shortlist with reasons, candidates informed of their status.

Interview loop Trigger: a candidate is moved to interview. Steps: the Recruiter finds panel availability, offers slots, confirms, sends the panel the CV and the criteria, and collects feedback in the structured form after each interview. Checkpoint: the panel's recommendations; the manager's decision. Output: feedback recorded, decision made, candidate told.

Offer to day one Trigger: a hire decision. Steps: the Onboarding Coordinator assembles the offer within the band, routes it for approval, sends the contract for signature, then builds the start plan: accounts, equipment, first-week schedule, buddy, policy acknowledgements, required training. Checkpoint: the offer approver; the manager confirms the plan. Output: a new starter who has everything on day one.

Leave and absence Trigger: a leave request in the app or in chat. Steps: the HR Administrator checks balance and team cover, routes to the manager, updates the calendar and balance, and sends absence to payroll at period end. Checkpoint: the manager approves. Output: balances correct, payroll correct, team calendar correct.

Review cycle Trigger: routine, per the cycle calendar. Steps: the Performance Partner opens the cycle, collects objectives, sends self-review and manager-review prompts, gathers peer feedback where configured, prepares the calibration view, and drafts development plans from the reviews. Checkpoint: managers write and own their reviews; leadership calibrates. Output: a completed cycle with plans, on time.

Compliance and expiry Trigger: routine, weekly. Steps: the HR Administrator lists training, certificates, right-to-work checks and probation dates expiring within 60 days, reminds the employee and manager, and escalates anything overdue. Checkpoint: none. Output: nothing expires unnoticed.

Offboarding Trigger: a leaving date is recorded. Steps: the HR Administrator builds the leaver checklist: handover, access removal requests to Operations, equipment return, final pay inputs, exit interview scheduling. Checkpoint: the manager confirms; payroll approves final pay. Output: a clean exit and a complete record.

By industry

Professional services firm. Roles map to a career framework with levels; the review cycle feeds promotion decisions and the People Analyst reports utilisation alongside from the Operations Supercube. Recruiting runs through referrals and LinkedIn; professional certifications sit in training with expiry.

Hospitality group. High-volume hourly hiring per venue; the Recruiter screens for availability and right to work first; onboarding includes food safety and licensing training with expiry tracked per site. Rotas stay in the rota system, but absence flows from here to it.

Healthcare provider. Registrations, DBS checks and mandatory training carry strict expiry; the compliance routine is the heart of the supercube. Sensitive records are locked to HR and the registered manager. Agency staff are contractors with a different contract type.

Technology company. Structured interview loops with take-home tasks; offers include equity with an approval chain; onboarding provisions accounts through the identity provider and equipment through Operations. Reviews run on a six-month cycle with peer feedback.

Retail chain. Seasonal hiring waves planned from the General Management calendar; the Recruiter runs group assessment scheduling; store managers see only their store's people and leave.

Non-profit. Volunteers are a contract type with their own onboarding and training; funders' reporting requirements on staffing feed the People Analyst's reports; pay bands are transparent by policy.

Guard rails

• Sensitive fields live in their own table with access limited to HR roles and the employee themselves; managers and agents other than the HR Administrator never read it. The screening and analytics agents work from the non-sensitive tables.
• Agents recommend and administer; they do not decide who is hired, promoted, disciplined or dismissed, and their screening rationale is visible so a manager can disagree with it.
• Screening criteria come from the role profile a person wrote, and the screening score is advice with reasons, never a filter that hides an application.
• Offers, pay changes and leavers are approved by named people before they reach payroll.
• Candidate data carries consent and a retention date; the HR Administrator deletes or anonymises when it is due.
• Every read of a sensitive record is audited with the actor.

Not in the box

• It is not a payroll system and does not calculate pay, tax or pensions. It sends approved inputs to the payroll provider.
• It does not give legal advice on employment matters. Policies and templates are the company's own, reviewed by their adviser.
• It does not make hiring or dismissal decisions and should not be configured to.
• Rota and shift scheduling stays with a rota system; absence is shared with it.