Choose tasks your team must answer correctly. Include exact identifiers, changing policies, conflicting records and missing information.
The project memory guide
Keep decisions and context where people and agents find them.
Make the source, revision and human check part of the answer. Start with a process where missing or outdated context causes real work.
A useful answer comes with evidence.
Sample records and answer.
The question
Which logging convention should new code in this service follow?
The source records
Convention A: superseded in this sample.
Convention B: current in this sample.
A cited draft answer
Follow convention B. Show its source and revision so the reviewer can check it.
Inspect the sourceA person checks consequential use.
When sources conflict or the answer lacks support, return the question to the operator. A current-looking answer is not proof of a current source.
Each component has a job you can test.
| Component | Role in this architecture | Question to test |
|---|---|---|
| Identity · L0 | Rules about whose work this is and which context applies | Is this the right account, project and permission context? |
| Critical facts · L1 | A small set of facts the workflow needs reliably | Can the owner inspect and update these facts? |
| Structure index · L1.5 | A map of where authoritative material lives | Can the workflow find the source without treating the map as the source? |
| Navigable collections · L2 | Documents and relationships a person can inspect | Is the relevant material complete and attributable? |
| Retrieval · L3 | Selection of context for the current question | Did it find the right exact term and relevant meaning? |
| Archive · L4 | Historical material with status and provenance | Does obsolete material stay distinct from current guidance? |
Judge memory on the questions your team must get right.
Keep the source revision, expected evidence, scoring rule, system version and date with the result.
Report the sample and the failure cases. A good score on selected internal questions is not a universal accuracy promise.
For your workflow, agree the evidence that would justify a release.
Confirm the behaviour in the actual build.
| Behaviour | What needs confirming before use |
|---|---|
| Find exact terms and relevant context | Test identifiers and meaning against your records; confirm which retrieval methods the actual build uses. |
| Create or update durable records | Define who can write, review, supersede and remove a record. |
| Handle contradictions and age | Check the source-selection rule and human escalation. Do not assume automatic contradiction detection. |
| Move data or change providers | Verify export format, access, dependencies and a tested fallback. |
Someone owns the sources and the exceptions.
Assign an owner who can inspect sources, correct obsolete guidance and decide when the workflow should stop. Teach that person on real tasks and verify the agreed operating checks before handover.
What your team operates
Source updates, review of important answers, exception routing and the agreed quality checks. The exact tasks depend on the workflow.
What the agreement defines
Delivery work, ongoing support, record exports and software licences. Confirm who handles failures and which dependencies continue after handover.
The technical choices behind the trace.
Formation and retrieval are different jobs
Formation decides what becomes a durable record, with its origin, scope and review state. Retrieval decides which existing evidence is relevant to one question. A retrieved item should not become an accepted fact merely because an AI repeated it.
Exact identifiers and semantic meaning
An exact product ID or account reference needs a matching strategy that preserves the identifier. A question phrased differently from its source may need semantic retrieval. Test both kinds of need. No one retrieval technique is a substitute for an evaluation on your material.
Contradictions, supersession and freshness
Keep the author or source, revision and effective context with the record. When records disagree, define the authority rule and a route to a person. An old record can remain useful history while being unsuitable for a current answer.
The sample above marks its old convention as superseded manually. It does not imply a verified automatic detector or a decay policy running in production.
Access, cost and maintenance
Check who may read each source and whether generated outputs can reveal it. A useful memory workflow also needs source maintenance, evaluation runs, monitoring and exception handling. Storage and model calls are only part of its cost.
Choose export and fallback requirements early. Keep client records, provider services and licensed supplier tooling explicit in the agreement.
Appendix · readiness checklist
Find the memory problems worth checking.
Describe what you have seen and what you still need to find out. You will get a worksheet of answers and suggested checks, not a maturity score.
Use what you know. Keep unknowns visible.
Your answers become a worksheet you can keep.
The checklist runs in your browser and does not save answers after reload. Copying or downloading is your choice. The worksheet is for your own notes; to get your free plan, send one workflow on the plan page. Editing this worksheet changes the export text; changing a checklist answer rebuilds the worksheet from the selections.
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- 01Which workflow should we look at?
- 02Which tools or agents does it use today?
- 03Where does it slow down or go wrong?