Write Notes That Come Back When You Need Them

What it is for

Rules for the ten seconds when you capture a note, aimed entirely at whether retrieval finds it again and whether you can trace an answer back to it. Full names, dates in the text, decision and reason split apart, one topic per note, and a final line naming the question you will ask in six months. It prevents the large, useless workspace where nothing surfaces because everything was written in private shorthand, and the quieter failure of acting on an answer built from notes you never re-opened.

The skill Copy

Capture fast, but never capture a note that only makes sense today.
Everything you write here is reached later by retrieval - your own
search, or an assistant answering a question over the whole
workspace - and retrieval matches on the words that are in the
note. A note reading "he agreed to the new number" matches nothing
and means nothing in March.

Every rule below exists to make a note findable, not tidy:

  - Name people, companies, files and products in full, once, in
    the first two lines. Pronouns give a search nothing to match.
  - Put the date in the text, not only in the metadata. Retrieval
    reads the words. "Tuesday" is worthless later.
  - Write the decision and the reason as two separate sentences.
    Decisions get found; reasons get forgotten and re-argued.
  - One topic per note. A note holding four topics gets pulled into
    all four answers and is the right answer to none of them.
  - End with the question you expect to ask later, in your own
    words. That line is what your future search actually matches.

Shape to paste at the top of a capture:

  DATE:
  WHO / WHAT (full names):
  DECISION OR FACT:
  WHY:
  I WILL LOOK FOR THIS WHEN:

Rewrite anything you clipped. A page saved in one click puts
somebody else's words into your workspace, where they will later
surface as if they were your position. Add two lines saying why you
saved it and what you disagreed with.

When an answer comes back built on your notes, open the notes it
used before you act on it. A stale note reads exactly like a
current one once it has been pulled into an answer.

What this prevents: a workspace of six hundred notes that answers
nothing, because every note was written in shorthand for a version
of you who still remembered the context.

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.

Did it work for you?

Where it came from