The Core Laws
Durable or it didn't happen
Work that lives only in the conversation evaporates with it. Put what you learned where it persists.
The conversation is a scratchpad with a lease. The reasoning that found the answer, the quirk discovered in the data, the method that finally worked: all of it evaporates when the session closes. What survives is what you moved into something you own, a document, a script, a rule, a record. Everything else is work you will pay for again, at full price, the next time you need it.
The trap is that the deliverable can be perfect while the path to it evaporates. The report lands, the numbers check out, and the knowledge of how, the cleaning step, the renamed column, the source that mattered, lives nowhere but the transcript. Encode the method, not just the answer. Next quarter, the method is the answer.
How to practice it
Save the how, not just the what.
The answer without its derivation is a fact you'll re-buy. Capture the steps, the sources, the gotchas: the part that was expensive.
Put it where you own it.
A document, a file, a note system you control. The chat scrollback is a lease, and the lease ends.
Make the recurring re-runnable.
Anything you'll need again, monthly, quarterly, next trip, becomes a checklist, a template, a script. The second run should cost minutes.
Distill before you close.
End substantial sessions by asking for a summary of what was learned and decided. Two minutes of distillation preserves the day.
Deep scripture: Codeuteronomy X — What is not committed did not happen