Everything here reads from what you have entered. Empty slots print as (not set) so you can see at a glance what still needs work. For the binder, use Print Complete Binder Packet at the bottom, which lays out the cover sheet, the matrix, the full plan, and the pocket card in one print job, paginated for a three-ring binder.
User Manual
This manual assumes you have never opened the P.A.C.E. Generator before and explains everything from the beginning. Work through it in order the first time. After that, use the table of contents to jump straight to what you need.
What is in here
What this tool is for
A plan that has only one way to work has zero ways to work the moment that one way fails. P.A.C.E. is a planning method, borrowed from military communications doctrine, that forces you to write down four ways to accomplish the same thing before you need any of them.
The P.A.C.E. Generator walks you through this for the twelve things that matter most when life gets difficult: how you talk to each other, who is in charge, where you meet, how you leave, how you treat the wounded, and so on. For each one you record a Primary method, an Alternate, a Contingency, and an Emergency last resort. The tool then tracks how complete and how current each plan is, and prints the whole thing for your binder and your pocket.
The four levels (the whole idea)
Every category in this tool uses the same four-rung ladder. You start at the top and only step down when the level above you stops working.
The single most useful column is not the plan itself, it is the trigger: the specific, observable thing that tells you it is time to drop to the next rung. "Cell network unreachable for more than ten minutes" is a trigger. "Things feel bad" is not. Good triggers let any member step the plan down without waiting for permission.
The four domains and twelve categories
The twelve categories are grouped into four domains so the work stays organized. You do not have to fill them in order, and you do not have to fill all twelve. Start with the ones marked CORE.
| Contact & Control | Communications, Command Succession, Rally Points, Muster & Accountability. How you stay in touch, who decides, where you link up, and how you account for non-fighters. |
| Movement | Bug-Out Routes, Transportation, Resupply / Cache. How you leave, what you leave on, and where you draw supplies. |
| Protection | Security Posture, Shelter / Hardening, Medical / CCP. Your alert posture, where you take cover, and how you treat the wounded. |
| Sustainment | Power, Water. Keeping the lights and the taps working as the grid degrades. |
Some categories carry a small label naming the module they will eventually pull from (Communications from COMMS MATRIX, Command Succession from ROSTER, and so on). That automatic import is a later feature. For now, every category is filled by hand, and your hand-entered plans are always kept.
What is on your screen
- Header (top). The module name, a COMMAND SUITE link back to the launcher, and the ⚙ settings gear.
- Sidebar (left). The Dashboard at the top, then the twelve categories grouped by domain, then Outputs and Help at the bottom. Help holds this manual and the Demo sandbox (RETURN TO LIVE when you are inside the demo). A colored dot on each category shows its health at a glance.
- Main area (right). Whatever you clicked in the sidebar opens here.
- Footer (bottom). Module number and live readiness percentage.
Your first fifteen minutes
Do not try to fill all twelve categories the first day. Fill the five core ones with rough drafts and improve them later.
- Open Communications from the sidebar. In the Primary box, write how you normally reach your people (for example, cell phone). Press SET TODAY to stamp it verified.
- Fill the Alternate, Contingency, and Emergency boxes with three more ways, each failing differently from the one above it.
- For each box, write one plain trigger in the "Trigger to Use This Level" field. This is the part most plans skip and the part that matters most.
- Repeat for Command Succession, Rally Points, Bug-Out Routes, and Medical. Those five are the pocket card.
- Click the Dashboard and watch your readiness percentage climb. Everything you type saves on its own.
Filling in a category
Each category screen shows four level cards (Primary, Alternate, Contingency, Emergency). Every card has the same four fields.
| Plan | What you actually do at this level. Be specific: names, frequencies, road numbers, distances, bearings. |
| Trigger | The observable condition that says "use this level now". Write it so any member could read it and act without you. |
| Success Criteria | How you know the level is working. For comms, that might be "two-way contact confirmed with all stations". |
| Last Verified | The date you last tested or confirmed the plan still works. SET TODAY stamps it, CLEAR removes it. |
A few categories rename the four levels to fit their subject. Command Succession labels them Commander 2IC 3IC Civilian Authority, and Security Posture labels them Green Yellow Orange Red. The four-rung idea is identical; only the names change.
Verification and decay
A plan you wrote two years ago and never checked is a guess. The tool tracks how long it has been since you verified each level and color-codes the result.
| FRESH | Verified within the last 180 days. Green. |
| STALE | Verified between 181 and 365 days ago. Amber. Time to re-check. |
| EXPIRED | Verified more than 365 days ago. Red. Treat as unverified. |
| UNVERIFIED | A plan exists but has no verified date, or the date will not read. Red. |
The dashboard rolls these up into a "Decay Flags" tile showing how many categories are red and how many are amber, so you always know what needs a verification pass. The two thresholds (180 and 365 days) are shown on the Settings screen.
The redundancy check
The most common P.A.C.E. mistake is four plans that all fail the same way. A cell-phone primary backed up by a different carrier still dies when the regional tower loses power. Your "two" plans were really one.
At the bottom of every category is a Redundancy Check. If your Primary and Alternate share a single point of failure, tick the box. The tool then asks you to justify why that shared weakness is acceptable for your area (sometimes terrain leaves you no honest choice). A flagged box with no justification shows amber on the dashboard; a flagged box with a written justification shows green, because you have at least faced the tradeoff with open eyes.
The Core 5 and the pocket card
Five categories are marked CORE: Communications, Command Succession, Rally Points, Bug-Out Routes, and Medical. These are the ones a person needs on them, on paper, when the screens are dark. The Core 5 Laminate Card output prints just these five, sized for a pocket, so each member can carry the essentials.
The dashboard tracks the Core 5 separately ("Core 5 Filled, x of 20") and weights them double in the overall readiness score, because a complete plan for water heating does you little good if nobody knows where to meet.
The dashboard and readiness score
The Dashboard is the first thing you see. Four tiles across the top give you the headline numbers, and below them every category appears as a card you can click to open.
- Overall Readiness. A weighted percentage of how many level slots are filled, with Core 5 categories counting double.
- Core 5 Filled. Filled levels among the five core categories, out of twenty.
- Total Levels. Filled levels across all twelve categories, out of forty-eight.
- Decay Flags. The count of red categories over the count of amber ones.
Each category card shows four small squares (one per level, lit when filled), a "x of 4" count, and a status word. A flag icon appears if the redundancy box is ticked.
Generating documents and the binder
Click Generate Documents in the sidebar. Each button opens the finished document in a new browser tab and brings up the print dialog automatically. From that dialog you can send it to a printer or choose "Save as PDF".
| Core 5 Card | A pocket-sized card with the five core categories and all four levels. Print, laminate, hand out. |
| Matrix | All twelve categories on one page, a column per level. The board-and-binder overview. |
| Full Plan | The complete written plan: every level, trigger, success criteria, verified date, and redundancy note. |
| Summary | One page of readiness numbers and a list of everything stale, expired, or unverified. |
| Binder Packet | Cover sheet, contents page, matrix, full plan, and pocket card, all in one print job, paginated for a three-ring binder. |
Saving, exporting, importing
Your plan is saved automatically inside this file, on this device, in the browser's local storage (the key is ao_pace_data_v1). Nothing is sent anywhere. Clearing your browser data or moving to a new machine will not carry it over by itself, so export a backup.
- Export JSON downloads your entire plan as a small file. Keep it with your other backups.
- Import JSON loads a plan from such a file. It asks before replacing what is there, so export first.
Both buttons sit on the Dashboard header and on the Generate Documents screen.
Settings
The gear icon in the top right opens Settings. The Display tab switches between the dark tactical theme and a lighter field-manual theme; the choice is shared across every module in the suite. The same screen shows the decay thresholds (180 days to amber, 365 days to red) and the About tab lists the doctrinal sources behind the design.
Glossary
| P.A.C.E. | Primary, Alternate, Contingency, Emergency. The four-rung planning ladder used throughout. |
| AO | Area of Operations. The ground you live on and plan to defend or leave. |
| MAG | Mutual Assistance Group. Allied families or neighbors who plan together. |
| RP | Rally Point. A pre-chosen place to link up. |
| LP / OP | Listening Post / Observation Post. A watch position covering an approach. |
| CCP | Casualty Collection Point. Where wounded are gathered and treated. |
| TCCC | Tactical Combat Casualty Care. The field standard for trauma under threat. |
| 2IC / 3IC | Second and third in command. The next people in the chain of authority. |
| Trigger | The specific observable condition that says it is time to step down a level. |
| Decay | How out of date a verified plan has become (fresh, stale, expired). |
| Core 5 | The five categories carried on the pocket card and weighted double. |
WATCHMAN Suite · P.A.C.E. Generator · Module 27 · © 2026 WATCHMAN Suite LLC. Doctrinal anchors: ATP 6-02.53, FM 3-0, FM 7-8, ATP 3-21.8, NC Scout, Shelby, Culper, Max Velocity Tactical, Skousen, Kearny, Rawles.
Demo sandbox
The P.A.C.E. Generator ships with a demo sandbox — a separate copy pre-loaded with a fully built sample plan for a fictional family retreat. All twelve categories are filled across all four levels, with triggers, success criteria, verification dates in every state of decay, and two categories deliberately flagged by the redundancy check so you can see what a flag looks like.
Opening and leaving. In the live module, click DEMO in the sidebar under this manual. Inside the demo, that same slot reads RETURN TO LIVE and takes you back. An amber banner across the top of the demo tells you which copy you are in at all times.
Your real data is safe. The demo keeps its plan in a completely separate storage slot. Nothing you do in the demo — editing, clearing, importing — can touch your real plan. Experiment freely.
Resetting. The ↻ RESET DEMO button (top bar and amber banner) wipes any changes and restores the sample plan.
How to use it. Open a category and study how each level names a plan, a trigger, and a success check. Look at the dashboard to see how verification dates drive the readiness score. Then open Generate Documents and print the sample — the laminate card and the full plan are exactly what your own finished P.A.C.E. will produce.
User Manual
This manual assumes you have never opened the P.A.C.E. Generator before and explains everything from the beginning. Work through it in order the first time. After that, use the table of contents to jump straight to what you need.
What is in here
What this tool is for
A plan that has only one way to work has zero ways to work the moment that one way fails. P.A.C.E. is a planning method, borrowed from military communications doctrine, that forces you to write down four ways to accomplish the same thing before you need any of them.
The P.A.C.E. Generator walks you through this for the twelve things that matter most when life gets difficult: how you talk to each other, who is in charge, where you meet, how you leave, how you treat the wounded, and so on. For each one you record a Primary method, an Alternate, a Contingency, and an Emergency last resort. The tool then tracks how complete and how current each plan is, and prints the whole thing for your binder and your pocket.
The four levels (the whole idea)
Every category in this tool uses the same four-rung ladder. You start at the top and only step down when the level above you stops working.
The single most useful column is not the plan itself, it is the trigger: the specific, observable thing that tells you it is time to drop to the next rung. "Cell network unreachable for more than ten minutes" is a trigger. "Things feel bad" is not. Good triggers let any member step the plan down without waiting for permission.
The four domains and twelve categories
The twelve categories are grouped into four domains so the work stays organized. You do not have to fill them in order, and you do not have to fill all twelve. Start with the ones marked CORE.
| Contact & Control | Communications, Command Succession, Rally Points, Muster & Accountability. How you stay in touch, who decides, where you link up, and how you account for non-fighters. |
| Movement | Bug-Out Routes, Transportation, Resupply / Cache. How you leave, what you leave on, and where you draw supplies. |
| Protection | Security Posture, Shelter / Hardening, Medical / CCP. Your alert posture, where you take cover, and how you treat the wounded. |
| Sustainment | Power, Water. Keeping the lights and the taps working as the grid degrades. |
Some categories carry a small label naming the module they will eventually pull from (Communications from COMMS MATRIX, Command Succession from ROSTER, and so on). That automatic import is a later feature. For now, every category is filled by hand, and your hand-entered plans are always kept.
What is on your screen
- Header (top). The module name, a COMMAND SUITE link back to the launcher, and the ⚙ settings gear.
- Sidebar (left). The Dashboard at the top, then the twelve categories grouped by domain, then Outputs and Help at the bottom. Help holds this manual and the Demo sandbox (RETURN TO LIVE when you are inside the demo). A colored dot on each category shows its health at a glance.
- Main area (right). Whatever you clicked in the sidebar opens here.
- Footer (bottom). Module number and live readiness percentage.
Your first fifteen minutes
Do not try to fill all twelve categories the first day. Fill the five core ones with rough drafts and improve them later.
- Open Communications from the sidebar. In the Primary box, write how you normally reach your people (for example, cell phone). Press SET TODAY to stamp it verified.
- Fill the Alternate, Contingency, and Emergency boxes with three more ways, each failing differently from the one above it.
- For each box, write one plain trigger in the "Trigger to Use This Level" field. This is the part most plans skip and the part that matters most.
- Repeat for Command Succession, Rally Points, Bug-Out Routes, and Medical. Those five are the pocket card.
- Click the Dashboard and watch your readiness percentage climb. Everything you type saves on its own.
Filling in a category
Each category screen shows four level cards (Primary, Alternate, Contingency, Emergency). Every card has the same four fields.
| Plan | What you actually do at this level. Be specific: names, frequencies, road numbers, distances, bearings. |
| Trigger | The observable condition that says "use this level now". Write it so any member could read it and act without you. |
| Success Criteria | How you know the level is working. For comms, that might be "two-way contact confirmed with all stations". |
| Last Verified | The date you last tested or confirmed the plan still works. SET TODAY stamps it, CLEAR removes it. |
A few categories rename the four levels to fit their subject. Command Succession labels them Commander 2IC 3IC Civilian Authority, and Security Posture labels them Green Yellow Orange Red. The four-rung idea is identical; only the names change.
Verification and decay
A plan you wrote two years ago and never checked is a guess. The tool tracks how long it has been since you verified each level and color-codes the result.
| FRESH | Verified within the last 180 days. Green. |
| STALE | Verified between 181 and 365 days ago. Amber. Time to re-check. |
| EXPIRED | Verified more than 365 days ago. Red. Treat as unverified. |
| UNVERIFIED | A plan exists but has no verified date, or the date will not read. Red. |
The dashboard rolls these up into a "Decay Flags" tile showing how many categories are red and how many are amber, so you always know what needs a verification pass. The two thresholds (180 and 365 days) are shown on the Settings screen.
The redundancy check
The most common P.A.C.E. mistake is four plans that all fail the same way. A cell-phone primary backed up by a different carrier still dies when the regional tower loses power. Your "two" plans were really one.
At the bottom of every category is a Redundancy Check. If your Primary and Alternate share a single point of failure, tick the box. The tool then asks you to justify why that shared weakness is acceptable for your area (sometimes terrain leaves you no honest choice). A flagged box with no justification shows amber on the dashboard; a flagged box with a written justification shows green, because you have at least faced the tradeoff with open eyes.
The Core 5 and the pocket card
Five categories are marked CORE: Communications, Command Succession, Rally Points, Bug-Out Routes, and Medical. These are the ones a person needs on them, on paper, when the screens are dark. The Core 5 Laminate Card output prints just these five, sized for a pocket, so each member can carry the essentials.
The dashboard tracks the Core 5 separately ("Core 5 Filled, x of 20") and weights them double in the overall readiness score, because a complete plan for water heating does you little good if nobody knows where to meet.
The dashboard and readiness score
The Dashboard is the first thing you see. Four tiles across the top give you the headline numbers, and below them every category appears as a card you can click to open.
- Overall Readiness. A weighted percentage of how many level slots are filled, with Core 5 categories counting double.
- Core 5 Filled. Filled levels among the five core categories, out of twenty.
- Total Levels. Filled levels across all twelve categories, out of forty-eight.
- Decay Flags. The count of red categories over the count of amber ones.
Each category card shows four small squares (one per level, lit when filled), a "x of 4" count, and a status word. A flag icon appears if the redundancy box is ticked.
Generating documents and the binder
Click Generate Documents in the sidebar. Each button opens the finished document in a new browser tab and brings up the print dialog automatically. From that dialog you can send it to a printer or choose "Save as PDF".
| Core 5 Card | A pocket-sized card with the five core categories and all four levels. Print, laminate, hand out. |
| Matrix | All twelve categories on one page, a column per level. The board-and-binder overview. |
| Full Plan | The complete written plan: every level, trigger, success criteria, verified date, and redundancy note. |
| Summary | One page of readiness numbers and a list of everything stale, expired, or unverified. |
| Binder Packet | Cover sheet, contents page, matrix, full plan, and pocket card, all in one print job, paginated for a three-ring binder. |
Saving, exporting, importing
Your plan is saved automatically inside this file, on this device, in the browser's local storage (the key is ao_pace_data_v1). Nothing is sent anywhere. Clearing your browser data or moving to a new machine will not carry it over by itself, so export a backup.
- Export JSON downloads your entire plan as a small file. Keep it with your other backups.
- Import JSON loads a plan from such a file. It asks before replacing what is there, so export first.
Both buttons sit on the Dashboard header and on the Generate Documents screen.
Settings
The gear icon in the top right opens Settings. The Display tab switches between the dark tactical theme and a lighter field-manual theme; the choice is shared across every module in the suite. The same screen shows the decay thresholds (180 days to amber, 365 days to red) and the About tab lists the doctrinal sources behind the design.
Glossary
| P.A.C.E. | Primary, Alternate, Contingency, Emergency. The four-rung planning ladder used throughout. |
| AO | Area of Operations. The ground you live on and plan to defend or leave. |
| MAG | Mutual Assistance Group. Allied families or neighbors who plan together. |
| RP | Rally Point. A pre-chosen place to link up. |
| LP / OP | Listening Post / Observation Post. A watch position covering an approach. |
| CCP | Casualty Collection Point. Where wounded are gathered and treated. |
| TCCC | Tactical Combat Casualty Care. The field standard for trauma under threat. |
| 2IC / 3IC | Second and third in command. The next people in the chain of authority. |
| Trigger | The specific observable condition that says it is time to step down a level. |
| Decay | How out of date a verified plan has become (fresh, stale, expired). |
| Core 5 | The five categories carried on the pocket card and weighted double. |
WATCHMAN Suite · P.A.C.E. Generator · Module 27 · © 2026 WATCHMAN Suite LLC. Doctrinal anchors: ATP 6-02.53, FM 3-0, FM 7-8, ATP 3-21.8, NC Scout, Shelby, Culper, Max Velocity Tactical, Skousen, Kearny, Rawles.
Demo sandbox
The P.A.C.E. Generator ships with a demo sandbox — a separate copy pre-loaded with a fully built sample plan for a fictional family retreat. All twelve categories are filled across all four levels, with triggers, success criteria, verification dates in every state of decay, and two categories deliberately flagged by the redundancy check so you can see what a flag looks like.
Opening and leaving. In the live module, click DEMO in the sidebar under this manual. Inside the demo, that same slot reads RETURN TO LIVE and takes you back. An amber banner across the top of the demo tells you which copy you are in at all times.
Your real data is safe. The demo keeps its plan in a completely separate storage slot. Nothing you do in the demo — editing, clearing, importing — can touch your real plan. Experiment freely.
Resetting. The ↻ RESET DEMO button (top bar and amber banner) wipes any changes and restores the sample plan.
How to use it. Open a category and study how each level names a plan, a trigger, and a success check. Look at the dashboard to see how verification dates drive the readiness score. Then open Generate Documents and print the sample — the laminate card and the full plan are exactly what your own finished P.A.C.E. will produce.