Standup update template
A standup update answers three questions: what you finished, what you're on today, and what's blocking you — short enough to read in 30 seconds. Ask your agent to draft it and share a link instead of a Slack wall.
The format has been the same for 20 years: yesterday, today, blockers. The problem isn't the structure — it's that most updates describe activity rather than progress. "Working on the auth flow" every day for a week tells a reader nothing. "Auth flow: email step done, OAuth redirect still broken — blocked on a missing client ID from Ben" tells them everything.
Draft it with your agent
Paste this into Claude, Cursor, or any agent — it pulls your recent work and drafts the update as a Drafty link your team can react to directly:
See it on a real one
What goes in a standup update
Three sections. If your update has more than three sections, it's a status report, not a standup.
- Finished — completed work since the last standup, in past tense. Name the thing, not the effort. "Shipped login page to staging" works. "Continued frontend work" doesn't. If nothing shipped, say so — that's signal too.
- Today — the one or two things you're actually working on, not a comprehensive list of everything on your plate. One priority per person per day is usually the honest number.
- Blockers — anything that's stopped or will stop progress, with the name of who can clear it. "Blocked on API keys from Mike" is a blocker. "Waiting on things" is not. If you have no blockers, say so explicitly — a team that reads "no blockers" has confirmed alignment, not just silence.
The most common mistake in standup updates
Copying yesterday's update and changing the date. It happens because writing the same three bullets every morning feels pointless — and when updates are vague enough, they become interchangeable. The fix is to write "Finished" before "Today": starting with what actually closed forces specificity, and specificity makes the update worth writing.
A useful test: could a teammate read your update and know whether the work is on track or drifting? If not, the update is performing status rather than communicating it.
Async vs. synchronous standups
The classic 15-minute standup call was designed for co-located teams. Most makers and PMs now use async updates — posted to Slack, a doc, or a shared link — because they remove the coordination cost of a fixed meeting time and let each person write when the context is freshest (usually right after finishing the last task of the day, not at 9am when the work hasn't started yet).
The downside of async: updates drift toward the performative. Without a room of people to disappoint, it's easy to post something that looks complete but communicates nothing. Writing the update as a shareable link — rather than a Slack message that scrolls away — adds just enough accountability to keep it honest.
FAQ
What are the three questions a standup update should answer? What did you finish since the last standup? What are you working on today? What's blocking you? Every standup format — Scrum, async, written, verbal — maps to these three. Anything beyond them belongs in a separate conversation, not the update.
How long should a standup update be? Short enough to read in 30 seconds. Three to five bullet points total across all sections is the right constraint. If your update takes longer to read than to say out loud, it's not a standup update — it's a status report.
What's the difference between a standup update and a status report? Cadence and scope. A standup update is daily and covers 24 hours of work; a status report is weekly or monthly and covers progress across a project or milestone. Status reports go to stakeholders; standup updates go to the immediate team. For the weekly version, a weekly report template is the right tool.
How do you write a good blocker? Name the specific thing that's stopped, and name the person who can unblock it. "Blocked waiting on the API credentials from Jordan" is a good blocker. "Blocked on API stuff" is not — it puts the work of triaging on the reader. If you're blocked on something systemic rather than a person, name what the decision is and who needs to make it.
What if nothing changed since yesterday? Say so. "No progress today — pulled into incident response all day" is an honest standup update. Silence reads as disengagement; a one-line explanation reads as someone doing real work that wasn't on the plan.
Can I use a standup update template for async teams? Yes, and it often works better. Async updates written at the end of the day — when the work is fresh — tend to be more accurate than verbal ones delivered at 9am before the day's started. The template is the same; the timing and medium differ.