ISSUE NO. 04
Give AI Real
Source Material.
Give AI reality instead of asking it to guess.
Give AI current sources, tell it which information outranks which, and keep the important knowledge in files you control.
QUICK VERSION
READ THIS IF YOU ONLY HAVE TWO MINUTES
AI should not guess
what you can simply give it.
At ONE Blades, the live store is the source of truth.
If an old internal document and the live store disagree, the live store wins.
That rule matters because AI does not only need information.
It needs to know
which information
outranks which.
Use a simple hierarchy:
Current source-of-truth documents
Current data
Reliable external sources
General AI knowledge
When you create files primarily for AI use, save them as Markdown (.md) whenever practical and when visual layout is not important.
Markdown is useful because it is:
- Clean.
- Structured.
- Portable.
- Human-readable.
- Easy to update.
- Not tied to one AI company.
PDFs and Word documents still have a place when visual structure matters.
The bigger principle is ownership.
Your important context
should live in files you control,
not only inside
one AI chat history.
THE WHOLE IDEA
Give AI reality.
Tell it which source wins.
Keep the important knowledge yours.
GO DEEPER
Reduce the amount
of guessing.
AI can sound as if it knows everything.
It does not.
It cannot reliably know private facts you never gave it.
It may know an older version of something.
It may infer incorrectly when two documents disagree.
It may fill a gap with a plausible answer.
A strong AI system reduces the amount of guessing required.
A real
ONE example.
ONE has changed quickly.
Products evolve.
Website language changes.
Policies become clearer.
Old internal documents can contain decisions that have since been replaced.
If the AI reads an old product document and the current website, the two may conflict.
The solution is not to hope it picks the right one.
The project contains an explicit rule:
The live ONE Blades store
outranks every document.
That changes the reasoning process.
Now the AI knows which source is authoritative.
Live ONE Blades store
The current source of truth.
Older project material
Useful context, but not allowed to override the live source.
Build a
source hierarchy.
For any serious project, decide where truth lives.
A useful hierarchy is:
Current source-of-truth material
Examples:
- Live policies.
- Current product specification.
- Current operating doctrine.
- Approved methodology.
- Current contract.
Current data
Examples:
- Sales.
- Analytics.
- Training results.
- Budget.
- Customer feedback.
- Inventory.
Reliable external sources
Use these for things that change outside your control.
- Laws.
- Software documentation.
- Platform policies.
- Current scientific research.
- Prices.
- Schedules.
General model knowledge
Useful for explanation, ideation, comparison, and broad context.
But it should not silently overrule your current sources.
Do not ask AI to choose
between conflicting sources
if you already know
which source should win.
Use Markdown as
an AI-first source format.
For documents whose primary job is to provide structured knowledge to AI, Markdown is often an excellent format.
A .md file is basically clean text with simple structure.
# PROJECT
## Purpose
## Current state
## Rules
## Source of truth
## Retired ideasHeadings are obvious.
Lists are obvious.
Relationships between sections are easier to preserve.
There is very little hidden styling or layout noise.
That makes the document easy to inspect, edit, version, and move between systems.
This does not mean Markdown is always superior.
If the information depends on a diagram, complex table, page layout, signed formatting, or visual design, preserve the format that contains the information correctly.
Use the simplest format
that preserves
what matters.
For text-first AI project knowledge, that will often be Markdown.