The first six pages of a company memory, in order

You have read enough about AI getting things wrong because it does not know your company. You would like to fix it. The obvious next step, a full knowledge base or a big documentation project, is the one most likely to stall by week three.

Start smaller. Six pages, each short enough to write in an afternoon, in this order. The order matters because each page makes the next one easier and because the first two stop most of the expensive mistakes on their own.

1. Facts we quote.

Prices, packages, payment terms, lead times, service areas, opening hours. Every line with a source, the date it was last checked and an owner. This is the page that stops an AI from inventing your prices, and it is the page new staff need most in their first week. If you only ever write one page, write this one.

2. Things we never do or say.

The promises you do not make in writing. The discounts that need approval. The customers who go straight to the owner. The words you avoid. Write each with a one-line reason, because a reason lets a person or an AI handle the case you did not foresee.

3. Who decides what.

Who approves refunds, discounts, new suppliers, hires, anything that leaves the building. An AI tool should read this and know when to stop and hand over to a named role. So should a new hire.

4. How we write.

A few paragraphs on tone, greetings, sign-offs and format, with two or three real examples of messages you were happy with. This is the page that makes AI drafts sound like your firm instead of like everyone else's AI.

5. Decisions and lessons.

A running, dated log. "Stopped offering weekend callouts, March, crews could not cover it." "Tried a mobile-money discount, it did not change behaviour, here is why." This is the page that stops your team, and your AI, from proposing last year's failed idea as this year's fresh one.

6. Start here.

Write this one last, even though it sits first. A single short page that says what the company does, lists the other five pages, and tells any reader, human or AI, to read the relevant ones before acting. At Provecta, every AI working session opens with a page much like this and the standards it points to, so whoever runs the session, every session starts from the same place.

What to leave out, for now

• Every document you own. Your drive is an archive. The memory is the short list of what is current and decided. Link to documents from the pages if needed.
• Anything confidential. Passwords, bank details, keys and personal data about staff or customers do not belong in pages that AI tools will read. Keep them where they already are.
• Long histories. Write what someone needs to act today. The story of how the pricing evolved since 2019 can live elsewhere.
• Pages without an owner. If nobody will keep it current, do not write it yet. A stale page is worse than a missing one, because it is trusted.

How you will know it is working

You will notice it in the corrections. The same fixes stop appearing in AI drafts. New staff ask fewer of the questions the pages answer and more of the ones they do not, which tells you what to write next. Meetings spend less time arguing about which number or policy is current.

Keep a short list, for the first month, of every correction you make to an AI draft and every question a colleague asks that the pages should have answered. Read it at the end of each week. If an item keeps appearing, it belongs on one of the six pages. If it appears once and never again, leave it.

You will also find the gaps. Some questions will turn out to have no agreed answer at all, and writing the page forces someone to decide. That is uncomfortable and it is most of the value.

The honest caveat

None of this makes an AI tool reliable on its own. It makes it better informed. Someone still reviews anything that goes to a customer, and anything irreversible still needs a person to approve it. The pages make that review faster, because the reviewer has something definite to check against.

Pick page one and give it this afternoon.

Find out where your firm stands at pgco.world/tools/ai-readiness, or book 20 minutes at pgco.world/book.