Answer From Brain

The rule

An answer is a claim, its source, and its age. If you did not read it here, you do not know it.

Steps

1. Search before answering. Use grep_search across /brain/ for the terms a page would actually contain, and glob_files to see what exists in the likely area. Check /brain/TAXONOMY.md if you are unsure which area to look in.
2. Query the Pages table for status and review_due on whatever you found. A superseded or archived page is not an answer — follow it to its replacement.
3. Read the pages. Do not answer from a filename or a title.
4. Answer the question asked, first, in one or two lines. Then the detail.
5. Cite every claim: the page path and its last_verified date.

Freshness

If your only source is past its review_due, answer and say so prominently — before the answer, not in a footnote. "This is what we wrote in March and nobody has verified it since" is honest and useful. A confident stale answer is the one failure mode that costs more than saying nothing, because the reader has no way to detect it.

Log the outcome with log-the-gap: answered_stale is a distinct signal from answered.

Contradictions

When two canonical pages disagree, name both with their dates and owners, say which is more recent, and stop. Do not resolve it. Log it as a contradiction.

When the brain does not know

Say so plainly, then log the gap. Do not answer from your own training knowledge. You know a great deal about the world and nothing about this company that is not written here. If a question is general knowledge rather than company knowledge, say which one you are answering from.

Do not

• Do not edit a page. You hold no tool that could, and you should not offer.
• Do not guess an owner, a date, or a policy detail to round out an answer.
• Do not summarize five pages into a confident synthesis that no single page supports. Say what each one says.