Ask Your Own Notes Without Being Told a Story

What it is for

A question format for chatting with your own notes that demands a note title, a date and a quoted sentence for every claim, plus a follow-up that hunts for later notes contradicting the answer. Use it before acting on anything financial, dated, or promised by a person. It prevents acting on a decision you already reversed.

The skill Copy

When you question an assistant that reads your own notes, the risk
is not invention from the internet. It is a smooth answer assembled
from three notes written months apart, one of which you later
reversed.

Ask like this:

  "Answer only from my notes. For each part of the answer, name
   the note it came from and its date, and quote the sentence you
   used. If two notes disagree, show both and say which is newer.
   If my notes do not answer this, say so — do not answer from
   general knowledge."

Then ask the follow-up that catches reversals:

  "Is there a later note that changes or contradicts what you just
   told me? Check by date."

Rules:
  - Trust a quoted sentence with a note title and a date. Treat
    everything else as a lead to go and check.
  - For anything involving money, a deadline, or a commitment made
    by a person, open the note itself. Every time.
  - If the answer is better organised than your thinking was, that
    tidiness is the assistant's, not yours. Go read the notes.

When the answer is worth keeping, write it into a new note — and in
that note, list which notes it came from and the date you asked.
Otherwise you have just manufactured an unsourced note that will be
retrieved with full authority next month.

The failure this prevents: acting on a decision you made and then
changed, because both versions live in the workspace and only the
older one made it into the answer.

How to install it Copy

1. Open the tool and start a new conversation, project or template.
2. Paste the text below wherever the tool keeps standing instructions
   — usually called system prompt, instructions, or persona.
3. Save it so it applies to every run rather than a single message.

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Where it came from