house-manual

---
name: house-manual
description: Turns the scattered facts about your property into a one-page house manual guests actually read, plus the safety notice you are required to display, printed and laminated and in the right two places. Use when guests keep asking the same questions, when a cleaner has to answer the phone on a Friday night, or when you have nothing on the wall at all.
---

# The one page guests actually read

You give this whatever you already have: the welcome email you copy and paste, the boiler manual photo on your phone, the wifi password stuck to the fridge, the notes you send arrivals on WhatsApp. You get back two printable documents. One is a single A4 page a guest reads standing up in the hallway with a bag in each hand. The other is the safety notice that has to be on display, with your certificates listed on it and the emergency numbers on it. Both are written so a guest who has never been to the town can use them at midnight.

## What it does

1. **Collect the twenty facts a guest asks for, and stop collecting.** The list is fixed: the full address with postcode, what3words or a landmark; how to get in and the backup if the key safe fails; the wifi network name and password exactly as typed, case sensitive; check-in and check-out times; where the bins go and which day; how the heating and hot water work; how the shower and the cooker work; where the fuse box, stopcock and gas meter are; parking, including any permit; what to do about noise and neighbours; whether smoking or vaping is allowed anywhere; whether pets are allowed; the guest number the property is licensed or advertised for; who to phone and a second number if that one rings out; the nearest pharmacy, supermarket, cash point and GP; and the checkout list. Anything beyond those twenty is a second page and a second page does not get read. Note which facts you do not have rather than guessing at any of them.

2. **Write the one page at the reading level of a tired stranger, in the order they need it.** The order is arrival, then safety, then living in the house, then leaving. Short lines, no paragraphs longer than two sentences, no hospitality voice. "Bins: black bin, Tuesday night, alley behind the house" beats "We kindly ask that our valued guests dispose of refuse responsibly." Put the wifi password in a box of its own in the largest type on the page, because it is the single most looked-for fact in the document and the one most often mistyped. Use 14 point or larger for body text, because the people reading this include the guest's mother who has left her glasses in the car.

3. **Build the safety notice as a separate sheet, because in parts of the UK it is not optional.** A short-term let licence in Scotland carries a mandatory condition requiring that the holder "must make the following information available within the premises in a place where it is accessible to all guests", and the list includes "a certified copy of the licence and the licence conditions", "fire, gas and electrical safety information", "details of how to summon the assistance of emergency services", "a copy of the gas safety report", "a copy of the Electrical Installation Condition Report" and "a copy of the Portable Appliance Testing Report". Build that sheet whatever nation the property is in, because the same information is what a guest needs in an emergency anywhere. List each certificate by name, its date and where the full copy is kept in the property.

4. **Put the fire instructions on the sheet in the words the fire guidance uses, and put a plan on it.** GOV.UK's guide for small paying guest accommodation, published on 20 January 2025, says of guest information: "A simple plan drawing may be useful for guests. This could include instructions on the back of the bedroom door and information in a welcome pack, including advice on how to call the emergency services and location details." The same guide is clear about why the route matters: "You need to make sure that any escape routes can be used safely. An escape route includes any rooms, corridors, and stairs that people must go through to escape from a building." So the sheet carries a simple floor sketch with the way out marked, the location of every alarm, the location of the extinguisher or fire blanket if there is one, and the sentence a panicking guest needs, which is the full address to read out to the operator.

5. **Cross-check every fact against the live listing and fix the listing, not the manual.** Whatever the manual says about check-in time, parking, pets, stairs, the number of beds and the guest maximum has to be what the advert says. Airbnb's terms of service put the duty on the host in plain words: "Your Listing must include complete and accurate information about your Host Service, your price (including any additional charges), and any rules or requirements that apply to your Guests or Listing", and hosts are responsible for "keeping your Listing information (including calendar availability) and content (like photos) up-to-date and accurate at all times." Where the two disagree, the listing is the promise the guest paid for, so the listing gets corrected and the correction gets logged with the date.

6. **Say the awkward things plainly, in the manual and in the advert, before the guest arrives.** Steep stairs, no lift to the second floor, a bath with no shower, single glazing on a main road, a shared front door, a two-mile walk to the nearest shop, a boiler that takes twenty minutes. The CMA's guidance on unfair commercial practices defines material information as information "the average consumer needs to take an informed transactional decision", and treats leaving it out, or giving it too late, as a misleading omission. A guest who reads about the stairs in the house manual after paying has been told too late. Anything on this list that is not already in the advert goes to the owner as a separate, numbered "add to the listing" action.

7. **Give every instruction a failure branch, because that is when the manual is read.** The heating instruction is not "the thermostat is in the hall". It is "the thermostat is in the hall; hold the dial for three seconds to boost; if there is no hot water, the boiler reset is the black button on the front, press once and wait ten minutes; if that fails, phone the number at the top of this page." Do the same for the key safe, the wifi router, the tripped fuse and the blocked sink. The runbook discipline in Anthropic's public operations skills puts it exactly right: be "painfully specific" rather than vague. A manual that only describes the happy path is a manual that has never been needed.

8. **Test it on someone who has never been in the property, and fix where they get stuck.** The same public runbook guidance says to "have someone unfamiliar with the process follow it. Fix where they get stuck." Hand the page to a friend, a new cleaner or a family member, ask them to get in, get the heating on, get online and put the bins out using only the page, and time it. Write down every question they ask out loud. Each question is a missing line. Repeat once. Two rounds of this removes more phone calls than any amount of rewriting at a desk.

9. **Print it, laminate it, and put it in the two places it gets used.** The one page goes on the kitchen wall or the fridge, at eye height, where the guest is standing when they wonder about the bins. The safety sheet goes by the front door with the certificates, where the Scottish condition requires it to be accessible to all guests and where anyone leaving in a hurry will pass it. Put the same two pages in the pre-arrival message as a PDF so the guest has them on the phone before they get to the key safe, which is the one moment the wall copy is no use. Date both sheets in the footer and set a reminder to reprint when a certificate expires.

## Then it checks

1. The one page fits on a single side of A4 at 14 point or larger, with the wifi network name and password in a box of their own.
2. Every one of the twenty facts in step 1 is either answered or listed under "owner to supply", with no invented times, prices, phone numbers or bin days.
3. Every instruction that can fail has a named failure branch ending in a phone number, and at least one second contact number appears on the page.
4. The safety sheet lists every certificate by name and date, gives the full property address in the form a guest would read to an emergency operator, and shows a plan with the way out marked.
5. Every fact in the manual about check-in, guest numbers, pets, smoking, parking and access matches the live listing, and any mismatch appears as a numbered "add to the listing" action with a date.
6. A person who has never been in the property has followed the page end to end, their questions are written down, and each one has either been answered in the page or recorded as a known gap.

Any check fails: name it, redo that step once. Failed twice: say what is wrong and stop.

## Rules
- Public information only.
- Never invent a fact, a number or a quote.
- Anything sent in someone's name says whose name it is.
- Never write a phone number, a bin day, an access code or an opening time you have not been given. A wrong emergency contact on a laminated sheet is worse than a blank line, because the guest stops looking once they have dialled it.
- Never put a door code, an alarm code or a key safe code in a document that travels outside the property. Codes go in the timed pre-arrival message, not in the printed manual and not in the PDF.
- Never let the manual quietly correct the advert. If the property has stairs the advert does not mention, the answer is to change the advert, because the guest made their decision before they ever saw this page.
- This output is a working document prepared for the owner's insurer, letting agent or local council licensing team to check before it is displayed. It reproduces safety and licensing information the owner supplies and tells the guest where the certificates are. It is not legal advice, it is not a fire risk assessment, and it does not certify that the property complies with anything.

## Built from
- GOV.UK, "Making your small paying guest accommodation safe from fire (accessible)", https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/making-your-small-paying-guest-accommodation-safe-from-fire/making-your-small-paying-guest-accommodation-safe-from-fire-accessible, published and last updated 20 January 2025, read 14 September 2026: the plan drawing and welcome pack recommendation, and the escape route wording, both of which shaped step 4.
- The Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 (Licensing of Short-term Lets) Order 2022, Schedule 3, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ssi/2022/32/schedule/3/made, read 14 September 2026: the mandatory condition listing exactly what must be available to guests inside the premises, which is the whole of step 3 and the contents of the safety sheet.
- Competition and Markets Authority, "Unfair commercial practices (CMA207)", https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/unfair-commercial-practices-cma207/unfair-commercial-practices, published 18 November 2025, read 14 September 2026: the definition of material information and misleading omission, which is why step 6 pushes awkward facts into the advert rather than leaving them for the manual.
- Airbnb, "Terms of Service", https://www.airbnb.co.uk/help/article/2908, read 14 September 2026: the host's duty to keep listing information and photos accurate at all times, which is the direction of travel in step 5.
- Anthropic, `operations/skills/runbook/SKILL.md` in the knowledge-work-plugins repository, https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anthropics/knowledge-work-plugins/main/operations/skills/runbook/SKILL.md, read 14 September 2026: "painfully specific" instructions and the instruction to have someone unfamiliar follow the document, which produced steps 7 and 8.

# house-manual

## You are given

Unsorted material about one UK short-let property: welcome emails, messages, appliance manual photos, a listing export, cleaner's notes, certificate scans. It will be incomplete. Work with what is there and record the gaps.

## Produce

Into `./house-manual-output/`:

1. `house-manual.html` - ONE side of A4, print stylesheet, 15mm margins, body 14pt, headings 18pt. Sections in this order only: ARRIVAL, SAFETY, THE HOUSE, LEAVING. Wifi network name and password in a bordered box at 20pt under ARRIVAL. Footer: property name and build date as DD Month YYYY.
2. `safety-notice.html` - ONE side of A4. Full address with postcode at 20pt. Then emergency number, owner contact and number, second contact and number, location of every smoke and heat alarm, location of fuse box, stopcock and gas meter, and a table `Certificate | Date issued | Expires | Kept where`. Include a 90mm empty div labelled "Floor plan: mark the way out".
3. `facts.csv` - columns exactly: `fact_id,category,question,answer,source_file,confidence,action_needed`. One row per fact below. `confidence` is `supplied`, `inferred` or `missing`.
4. `listing-actions.csv` - columns exactly: `action_id,fact_id,what_the_manual_says,what_the_listing_says,recommended_change`. One row per manual-versus-listing mismatch, plus one per material fact absent from the listing (stairs, access, noise, parking, walking distances, pets, smoking, guest maximum).
5. `gaps.md` - numbered list of every `missing` fact, written as a question the owner answers in one line.

The twenty facts: address and finding it; entry and backup entry; wifi name and password; check-in and check-out times; bins and collection day; heating and hot water; shower; cooker; fuse box; stopcock; gas meter; parking and permits; noise and neighbours; smoking and vaping; pets; maximum guests; first contact number; second contact number; nearest pharmacy, supermarket, cash point and GP; checkout list.

## Rules

- Never invent a phone number, postcode, bin day, code, opening time, distance or certificate date. Mark it `missing`.
- Never write a door, alarm or key safe code into any file. Write `[CODE - send in timed pre-arrival message, do not print]`.
- Every instruction that can fail gets a failure branch ending in a phone number.
- British English. £ for money. Dates DD Month YYYY. No em dash characters. No emoji.
- Plain HTML with inline CSS. No JavaScript, no external fonts, no network calls. Both pages must print correctly unstyled.
- One printed side per HTML file. Overflow moves to `gaps.md`.

## Return

The five file paths written, the fact count by confidence level, the row count in `listing-actions.csv`, and any input file you could not read. State that the printed pages are a working document for the owner's insurer, letting agent or council licensing team to check before display, and are not legal advice or a fire risk assessment.