project

Your record keeps what you think. A project needs somewhere to keep what it is doing: what has been decided and why, what is still open, what is live now, and what you said about it. Without that, it lives in old chats, and the next model to pick the project up starts again from nothing. So any project you work on with models (a company, a product, a book, a client, a move abroad) gets three plain files that every model reads and writes and you decide. Everything else it has (code, designs, media, the full conversations) stays where it already lives, and the front door says where.

The three files

• AGENTS.md, the front door. The project in a paragraph, the map (what each file and folder at its top level holds, and where each thing kept elsewhere lives), the rules, and the upkeep. It is the one page every session reads. It points here for the general shape and keeps only what is specific to this project: where its work lives, what is derived from what, what may run on a schedule, and how it ships.
• The project file. What is still open comes first, so every reader meets it before anything else. Then what is true and decided, each with its reason. Then what is live now, one section each.
• Your words. Your load-bearing lines about the project, sorted under the project file's sections, each copied exactly, dated, and pointing to the full conversation, so a better model can always check the project file against what you actually said. The bold lead-ins are the model's, and the quotes are yours.

Name the two files for what the project is (a company's are company.md and founder.md, a book's might be book.md and words.md), and the front door names them.

The rules

1. What runs is the truth for anything that runs. Prices, limits, pages and flows are read from the code or the live service, never restated in the three files.
2. One home per fact. When two files say the same thing, one of them will soon be wrong.
3. Present state only. The history is in Git, so the files carry no logs, no "superseded" notes and no strikethroughs.
4. Your words are kept. When you decide or explain something about the project, the lines that carry it go into your words file under their topic, copied exactly and dated, with where the full conversation is. Everything else can be rewritten.
5. Open holds only what cannot be settled now. First try to settle a question with you and write the answer into its section, so only what genuinely waits on you or on evidence stays open.
6. A live piece of work is one section under Now. When it ends, what is worth keeping moves up into the rest of the project file and the section goes.
7. Something from outside enters only as a reason. A rival's move, someone asking for this, or a new tactic goes in only if it changes what the project believes or does, written as the reason beside that claim. A signal that changes nothing is not written down.
8. What goes out is derived. Anything the project sends or publishes is regenerated from the project file when it changes in a way that matters to it. The front door names those outputs and any that are frozen.
9. Models do the work, and you decide. Nothing leaves without your go, whether a message, a payment, a publication or a release.
10. Small on purpose, never by budget. Every sentence has to earn its place, and anything nobody would miss next week goes, but there is no size target. A new file needs a question none of the three can answer.

Working in one

• Read the front door first, then the project file before any work that depends on what has been decided. It is one read.
• Anything the project sends is project work, even in your voice.
• One project's knowledge never enters another project's files, and what you think about yourself belongs in your record, not in a project.

Starting one

When a project you are working on has nowhere of its own to keep what it decides, make the three files where its work already lives (its repository or its folder), unless that folder is published as it stands (a website served straight from it), where your words would go live; then, and for a project with no folder of its own, make them in projects/<name>/ in your own folder, and add one line to your guide's map so every tool finds them. A project that already keeps this somewhere (an instructions file, a wiki, a planning document) keeps it there, and the front door points at it rather than copying it in. The front door opens with the project in a paragraph and the map, points here for the general rules and upkeep, and adds only the rules specific to it. The project file starts with an empty Open, and your words file starts with the first lines you say about the project.

Upkeep

Each of the three stays clean and gets better every time it is touched: on every edit, in full at the close of any session that touched the project, and across all three when a clearly better model arrives.

The front door

• Clean. The map matches the folder exactly, so anything that is not on it gets a line or a home; code is mapped by its folders, and nothing is ever deleted just to make the map fit. A rule that no longer changes what a model does, or that repeats the project file, goes.
• Improve. A mistake a model makes there twice becomes a rule there, because it is the one page every session reads.

The project file

• Clean. A question that gets settled leaves Open the same turn, and its answer goes into the section it belongs to. A piece of work that ends leaves Now, and only what is worth keeping moves up. A fact the code or the live service contradicts is fixed to match, unless it is a decision the code has not caught up with yet, which goes under Now as work to do. Two passages that say the same thing become one.
• Improve. Whoever touches a section leaves it better. Rewrite rather than append, lead with the decision and then the reason, and point to the section of your words it came from.

Your words

• Clean. A quote is never edited. It goes when the project file no longer rests on it, when another quote says the same thing better, or when you have changed your mind (the newer quote replaces it, and the full conversations keep both). Every quote keeps its date and a path to its conversation that opens.
• Improve. The sections follow the project file's, and each bold lead-in says plainly what the quote establishes. Every decision in the project file that came from you points to its section here, and a full pass reads the two side by side to catch where the summary has drifted from what you said.

Off. Delete this file. Each project's three files stay, plain and readable by any model.