WHAT THIS FILE IS
=================
budget-change-digest.skill — Compares two versions of a budget and tells you
what actually moved, in the terms you report on.

A .skill file is Anthropic's packaging format for Claude Skills. It is a
standard ZIP archive, nothing more. This build is intentionally uncompressed
so the contents stay human-readable in a text editor.

LOOK INSIDE YOURSELF
====================
Rename the file from .skill to .zip and extract it, or run:  unzip budget-change-digest.skill
Every file inside is plain-text markdown. There is no executable code.

WHAT'S INSIDE
=============
  SKILL.md
  references/alignment-and-bridge.md
  references/attribution-rules.md
  references/output-template.md
  README.txt (this file)

WHAT IT DOES
============
By November a budget has been through four or five rounds, and every review
opens with the same question: what changed, and who changed it? Answering by
hand means reconciling a few hundred rows across two files, which is why the
honest answer is usually "let me come back to you."

This skill aligns two versions line by line, bridges your key metric from one
to the next, ranks the changes that did most of the work, and attaches an owner
and a reason to each.

The distinctive part is the unexplained-delta list: every material change it
could NOT attribute to a person and a stated reason. If a number moved and
nobody owns the reason, that's a finding.

WHAT YOU GIVE IT
================
  Required:     two versions of the budget (two files or two tabs)
  Recommended:  your key reported metric — EBITDA, operating income, burn
  Optional:     a change log or comment threads, owner names,
                the previous run's digest so open items carry forward

WHAT YOU GET BACK
=================
  The headline: your metric from X to Y, and the three changes that did most of it
  A bridge that ties exactly, with the residual shown
  A department table with dollar impact and direction
  The unexplained list — material changes with no owner or no reason
  Open items carried forward from the previous round

HOW TO USE IT
=============
Upload this file as-is to Claude: Settings -> Skills -> Add.
Or add it in Claude Cowork or Claude Code.

Third in the season set, after /owner-packet-builder (September) and
/submission-reviewer (October). Runs October through November.

From Aleph (getaleph.com), the FP&A platform.
The full guide: https://www.getaleph.com/claude-skills-library
Questions: marketing@getaleph.com
