A sample built on fictional content. Holcombe Mechanical is not a real company and this reflects no real engagement.
Ermetis
The memory
What your company knows, and how it decides.
Your people make the decisions and the judgment calls. The memory is what they and their software are working from when they do. It holds the facts, the reasoning behind decisions that have already been made, and which version of an answer is the current one. We build it first, because everything else we build runs on it.
01How it works
Most information a company needs is already somewhere inside the business.
One ordinary week at Holcombe Mechanical, and the quote written at the end of it. Watch
it both ways.
ViewSame in both views
02The shape of it
Once it exists, everything that answers a question or drafts a document reads from the same place.
The drawing below is the core from stage three of the walkthrough, with everything that reads from it drawn in. Five of those readers are software and the sixth is a person with a better tool. We draw the person the same size as the software, because the core is worth building whichever of the two ends up doing the job.
The first piece of work covers one area of the business, and there is no software in it yet.
Quoting, written down and kept in a folder that Holcombe's own AI tools and its own people both read.
Holcombe Mechanical
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This is wider than the screen and scrolls sideways.
Nothing is installed and nothing is integrated. This is what the first paid piece of work hands over.
14
Entries reviewed and approved, for the questions that can only have one answer.
31
Items kept with a note on where each one came from. Useful, and nobody needs to approve them.
6
Questions it does not answer, written down so nobody assumes otherwise.
03What it remembers
It remembers three things, and the facts are the easiest of them.
Most attempts at this collect documents and stop there. Documents carry the first of the three well enough. They carry very little of the second, and the second is the part that makes the rest usable by somebody who was not there.
Facts
Rates, assemblies, terms, thresholds, who the customer is, and what equipment sits on their roof. This is the part everyone thinks of first, and it is the easiest part to get hold of.
Why decisions went the way they did
Grocery rooftop work carries a 12 percent adder. The memory also holds what that adder is covering and what would change it, so somebody who was not in the room can apply the rule to a job that is slightly different.
Which version is the current one
When three copies of a workbook disagree, one of them is right. The memory records which one, who said so, and when, so neither a person nor a piece of software has to guess.
None of this decides anything. A person still prices the job, approves the credit, and signs the proposal. The memory is what they and their software are working from when they do.
04One entry, in full
An entry records how a decision gets made, with the answer as only one part of it.
This is the format every approved entry uses. A bare answer goes stale the first time a job is slightly different, and a senior person will put their name to a rule that has its exceptions written down when they would not put it to a bare number.
Rooftop work at a grocery site carries a 12 percent adder on installed labor. It covers night crane picks, roof protection over an open sales floor, and working around case covers, all of which slow every trade on the roof.
What changes it
Daytime access with the store trading normally brings it down. A second or third store in the same rollout brings it down again, because the crew has already done one. A site that has been surveyed and staged removes most of the unknown the adder is carrying.
Known exceptions
Bexley Store 118 needs three separate night crane picks because of the staging constraint recorded against that site. Those are priced as their own line and are not part of the 12 percent.
Escalate when
The landlord controls roof access, or the roof cannot be reached from inside the building. Neither case is covered here and both change the number materially.
Reviewed and approved by
Doug Wetzel, senior estimator. Approved 12 March. Back for review each March, or sooner if the crane rate moves.
Exceptions get a field of their own, because most of the real judgment at a company is in the exceptions and not in the rule. Nobody has to approve a universal rule they do not actually believe.
This is the entry the quote drafter cites when it prices a Bexley job, and it is the same entry a new estimator reads in their first week. The record does not change depending on who is reading it.
05The two kinds of entry
A small set of approved answers, and a much larger set kept for reference.
Approving something spends the scarcest attention in your company, so the approved set stays small. Everything else is still worth having, and it is kept exactly as it arrived with a note on where it came from.
Reviewed and approved
Everything else
What goes here
The questions that can only have one answer. Pricing rules, thresholds, terms, approval limits.
The meeting that explains why a call went the way it did, the history on an account, what the last three jobs taught you.
Who stands behind it
A named person and a date, and it replaces every other version in circulation.
Nobody approves it. It carries a note on where it came from: who said it, when, and in what context.
How much weight it carries
It is the company position, so the question of weight does not arise.
By who said it, how close they are to the subject, whether anyone else confirmed it, and how recently.
What an answer looks like
Cites the entry, the person who approved it, and the date.
Says out loud that it came from here, so nobody mistakes it for the company position.
At Holcombe today
14 entries, all in quoting.
31 items: post-job notes, vendor terms, account history.
Material in the second column never gets quietly rewritten into the first. That would be approving something through the back door, and the value of the approved set is that a named person actually looked at it.
06What it actually is
Where it starts, it is a folder and nothing more.
Nothing is installed and nothing is integrated, so it works with whatever you already pay for and it survives you changing your mind about vendors. You keep it in one shared location and point your own AI tools at it. If you stopped working with us the week after it arrived, it would keep working.
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This is wider than the screen and scrolls sideways.
07Keeping it true
An entry that has gone stale still carries a name and a date, and people trust it.
That is the reason the engagement does not end at delivery. What follows is ordinary maintenance, and it is what keeps the memory worth reading a year later.
New material comes in through one pathVendor price rounds, a new agreement, a job that came in badly. All of it arrives at one place and not in five inboxes, so nothing depends on who happened to be copied.
Conflicts go on a list before anybody settles themWhen something new disagrees with an approved entry, that pair goes on a short list. Nobody edits an entry underneath the person who approved it.
The list goes to the person who owns that areaA handful of decisions, with the conflict shown both ways. This is the only recurring meeting the whole thing needs, and it stays short because the entries were settled before it started.
Entries expire on a scheduleEvery approved entry carries a review date. When that date passes the entry is flagged for a fresh look, and any answer drawn from it says so.
What it does not cover stays written downThe list of open questions is maintained the same way the entries are. A tool that cannot answer from the memory says so, and people come to rely on that more than on the answers.
Two of the other samples show this happening. In the answer desk, the warranty question from the walkthrough is routed to Doug and comes back as an approved rule. In the drafter, an approved edit is recorded against the site it applies to, and the rule beside it is left exactly as it was approved.
Recent changesThe memory › changelog
W-12 added
Warranty on customer-supplied equipment. Raised by a question nobody could answer, ruled by Doug Wetzel, approved and published. The list of open questions got one shorter.
BEX-118 noted
Three night crane picks recorded against Bexley Store 118 as a site constraint. DW-7 unchanged, because the constraint belongs to the site and not to the rule.
Vendor round absorbed
Mansfield Supply equipment pricing updated through the intake path. Four assemblies in the master workbook flagged for Doug, three accepted, one sent back.
08How it connects
The entries are connected, so one question can reach across all of them.
Each entry names the things it concerns: the customer, the job, the quote, the rule, the person who signed it. Those names are connections, and they are what let a question reach material that was never filed together. Here is the chain the memory holds around one job.
Each of these records stands on its own. Because they are connected, they can also answer questions that no single one of them holds. The one below is the kind an owner actually asks, and the memory answers it by walking the chain.
Where did the Store 118 price come from, and how did it hold up?Asked by Brian Aldridge · answered from six connected records
The price
Quote BEX-118 went out at $85,430, with Doug’s crane edit in it and the margin checked against the 22 percent floor. Every line cites the workbook row, the rule, or the vendor quote it came from.
The rule behind it
Rule DW-7 put 12 percent on the installed labor, and its Store 118 exception priced the three night crane picks as their own line.
The equipment
The two units came from Mansfield quote Q-8841, freight included, which became purchase order PO-5521 when the job was won.
How it held up
Mansfield’s invoice 88312 matched the order, except a freight line that contradicted Q-8841 and went to Terry Hobbs instead of being paid quietly. Whitten Crane’s invoice 7208 billed exactly the three night picks DW-7’s exception had priced.
Every step cited
Each line names the record it came from, so checking any part of this takes seconds.
How the walking happens depends on how far the system has been built. While the memory is a folder, the connections are written into the entries by name and a person follows them one step at a time. Once software runs on it, an answer like this one is assembled the same way, only faster, and every step stays cited.
This chain is the same one the other samples walk one step at a time: the drafter cites Q-8841 when it prices the job, and the paperwork line checks invoice 88312 against it four weeks later. They agree because they read from the same connected records.
09What runs on it
Every other sample on this page is reading from the memory, including the one with no software in it.
These do visibly different jobs and they all work for the same reason. Each one is ordinary software pointed at knowledge that has been written down properly, with a person making the decision at the end.
The sixth reader in the drawing is an estimator with a better tool, working a job the way they always have and getting the right answer the first time because the answer exists in one place. That workflow has a sample of its own, and there is no software anywhere in it. If the walk is worth doing with no software involved, the memory was worth building.