Proverbs
Durable analysis
An analysis that lives in a chat dies with it, and next quarter pays to re-derive it. Encode the method, not just the answer.
An analysis that lives in a chat thread has the lifespan of the thread. The reasoning, the sources, the decision it justified: all of it silts up behind a hundred messages, unfindable the week someone asks why the call was made. The ninth law for stewards: the moment an analysis becomes load-bearing, distill it out of the conversation into a document you own, with the method attached, not just the conclusion.
The smell to watch for is re-reading. When catching up on your own thread takes longer than the work it records, the thread has stopped being a workspace and become a liability. Summarize, extract, and hand the next phase a brief instead of a scrollback.
How to practice it
Distill at the decision.
The moment a thread produces a conclusion someone will act on, it gets written up: claim, method, sources, date.
The document owns the analysis.
Chats are where analysis happens; documents are where it lives. Link the doc, not the conversation.
Method over conclusion.
Next quarter needs how the number was made, not just the number. Record the recipe.
Hand off briefs, not threads.
A successor, a tool, or a fresh session gets a page of distilled context, never a transcript to spelunk.
Deep scripture: Codeuteronomy X — What is not committed did not happen