The goal is not to copy a person’s tone. It is to make the team’s facts, judgments, and approval boundaries traceable.

01 / CHOOSE THE ANSWERSDefine the small set of questions worth standardising

Begin with recurring, low-ambiguity questions whose answers already exist: onboarding, document location, standard process, approved language, and escalation points.

• Exclude private client detail by default.
• Exclude legal conclusions that require a fresh factual assessment.
• Exclude commitments, payments, publication, or external sending without approval.

02 / MODEL THE RECORDTurn every answer into a governed record

A paragraph alone cannot carry provenance or responsibility. Use stable fields.

Question:
Approved answer:
Source document or URL:
Source excerpt / page:
Owner:
Effective from:
Review date:
Audience / permission:
Confidence:
Escalate when:

03 / SEPARATE LAYERSKeep facts, judgment, examples, and tone apart

Facts change on one timetable, policy on another, and writing style on a third. Separate them so a style update cannot silently change a rule.

• Fact layer: names, dates, product states, rules, and definitions.
• Judgment layer: approved criteria and exceptions.
• Case layer: examples with personal data removed.
• Voice layer: tone and formatting guidance.

04 / HUMAN GATERequire approval where consequences begin

The assistant may retrieve and draft. A named owner approves external advice, a new exception, a legal conclusion, or anything that changes money, rights, privacy, or reputation.

05 / TEST WITH REAL QUESTIONSEvaluate answers, citations, refusals, and escalation

Create a small test set containing ordinary questions, outdated questions, ambiguous cases, permission conflicts, and questions with no answer.

• Does the answer cite the correct record?
• Does it refuse to invent missing facts?
• Does it prefer the latest effective version?
• Does it escalate the right cases to the right owner?

06 / MAINTAINTreat deletion and expiry as product features

Review records on a schedule, mark superseded material, record every edit, and give people a way to correct or remove personal information. A knowledge base that only grows will eventually become confidently wrong.