The rule you repeat: put it in a file
If you paste the same instructions into an AI chat every morning, the fix is one plain file that the AI reads before every job.
Here is a story I've heard in some form from nearly every business owner I talk to. I'll tell it through Dana, who is made up but probably familiar.
Dana runs a home services company with plumbers, electricians and a locksmith. Every morning, before her first quote, she sets up her AI chat all over again. She uploads her quote template and her suppliers' price lists, and she pastes in her rules: a water heater swap always includes a gas connector and two supply lines, prices come from the supplier's list and not from memory, and quotes are written in plain words.
It works for as long as she remembers. On the Thursday she forgets to paste the rules, a water heater quote goes out without the gas connector, and somebody has to drive back with one.
Why it happens
In a chat, Dana's rules live in two places: her head and her clipboard. The AI never keeps them, so every new chat starts from nothing, and the day she forgets is the day it goes wrong.
My trade had exactly this problem long before AI. Every new person on a software team asked the same questions, and we answered them from memory, a little differently each time. So we started writing the rules down in a file that sits inside the project, right beside the work. When AI arrived, it read that same file.
The fix
Dana makes one new folder on her computer and gives it to an agent, an AI that can open and change files. (I use Cowork in the Claude desktop app; it needs a paid plan.) She pastes her rules one last time, and this time she asks for three things: write these rules down in a file, make a place for my suppliers' price lists, and make a place for the quotes.
The rules file is plain text in her own words, a few short rules under a few headings. Nothing in it is code, and she can open it, print it or change it herself, with or without the AI.
From then on she asks for a quote the way she'd ask a colleague, "a water heater swap for Mr. Alvarez", and the agent reads the rules before it starts.
When it gets something wrong
The next job is a rekey of three locks. Dana has no rule about keys, so the agent guesses two keys for each lock, and it tells her that it guessed. That is worth noticing: a guess that is labelled as a guess is one you can catch.
Dana's company always cuts three. So she tells it once: "a rekey always includes three new keys for each lock; fix the quote, and add that to how we work." It fixes the quote, and then it writes the new rule into the file. The next day, a rekey for a different customer comes back with three keys per lock, and she never mentioned keys.
How I'd write the file
- Keep each rule short, one to a line, in the words you'd use with a new employee.
- Write the reason when it isn't obvious. "Always three keys, because customers lose one in the first month" is easier to apply sensibly than "always three keys".
- When you correct the AI, ask it to add the correction to the file. Then read what it wrote.
- Keep reading the work. A rules file is read before every job, but it is not a guarantee, and whatever you catch becomes the next rule.
The file is yours. If you change tools tomorrow, your rules come with you, because they were never stuck inside a chat.