Proactively add rules and knowledge — don't wait to be asked

Every session that surfaces a durable insight, decision, taste rule, or pattern must write it to knowledge/ or memory/ in the same turn. Don't wait for user to ask.

Proactively add rules and knowledge

The rule

Every time a durable insight surfaces in a session — from a video transcript, a grill, a recurring error pattern, a user preference, a build failure lesson — write it to knowledge/ or memory/ in the same turn. Do not wait for the user to say “add this as a rule.”

The agent is responsible for identifying what’s worth keeping. Users are thinking about their problem, not about knowledge curation.

Triggers that should fire automatic knowledge capture

What this looks like in practice

• GHA build fails with PS 5.1 ?. syntax error → write “corp-vdi-build-failures-use-gha.md” to memory
• 8 retries of same blocked build → write lesson: suggest GHA immediately on AV block
• User adds a rule about Dagger → grill first (per grill-before-adding-rule), then write
• Video transcript arrives → extract concrete takeaways, grill on each, write approved ones
• User says “responses should be more creative” → write memory feedback, don’t just apply it

Anti-patterns

• ❌ Learning a lesson and not writing it → same mistake next session
• ❌ User has to ask “add this as a rule” explicitly for every lesson
• ❌ Writing every casual observation to knowledge/ (noise) — only write DURABLE facts
• ❌ Writing knowledge mid-task without finishing the task first — finish, then write

”Durable” test

A fact is durable if: “Would a fresh session 3 months from now benefit from knowing this?” If yes → write it. If it’s task-specific, session-only, or will change next week → skip.

Cross-refs

• self-update-rule — the protocol for writing
• grill-before-adding-rule — which artefact type to write
• knowledge-everything-caveman — style guide for the writing

Edit on GitHub · Back to index