Everyone has the same model. The difference is what it
read before it answered.
Waziri Garuba · August 2026 · 16 panels
I spent about a year quietly disappointed in a piece of software, and
the whole time the problem was sitting on my side of the desk.
This one is short and it is drawn, because I have explained
it out loud maybe forty times now and the drawing lands faster than I do.
It is not about any particular product. Whichever assistant you use, the
shape of the problem is identical.
01Arrival
Every morning at about 6:40, someone shows up to work for me.
02The room
He is the best hire I have ever made. Fast, tireless, never bored, never precious about the work.
03What he brought with him
And every single morning, he has forgotten everything.
04Yesterday, today
Not my clients. Not my rates. Not the way I write. Not the correction I gave him twice last Tuesday.
05The ritual
For a long stretch I did what almost everybody does. I explained myself again. And again. And again.
06The easier conclusion
Then I concluded the tool was mediocre. Which was a great deal easier than the other available explanation.
07The other explanation
In a year of complaining about him, I had never once written anything down.
08This is an old problem
Every trade that ever outlived one person solved this the same way. The shift log. The recipe. The notebook you hand the apprentice. Nobody called it technology. They called it doing the job properly.
09So I left something by the door
So I started leaving a briefing by the door. Not a prompt. A briefing — the same thing I would hand a new hire on their first morning.
10It grew into five layers
Five layers. Every assistant on the market has all five, hiding under different names. Most people have built one of them.
11Before he says a word
He reads all of it in about two seconds, every session, before he answers a single question.
12The same room
Now he walks in already knowing who my clients are, how I write, what I charge, and the two names that must never appear in anything a client will read.
13The part that took me longest
Here is the part that took me longest to accept. My competitor is running the identical stranger I am. Same brain. Same speed. Same monthly bill.
14What you actually own
The only thing I own is what mine reads first.
15One warning
One warning, learned the hard way. I had written never open that file into my instructions and considered the matter closed. An instruction is a request. Only a lock is a lock. Know which one you have built.
16Tomorrow, 6:40
You are not using AI. You are writing the briefing a stranger reads every morning. Write it once, properly, and he will read it every morning for the rest of your working life.
The five layers, plainly
Written out, so you can go build them tonight without
scrolling back up.
01
IDENTITY
Who you are, who you serve, what you sell.
02
RULES
How the work must be done, and what finished looks like.
03
MEMORY
Decisions already made, so they stay made.
04
LIMITS
What must never happen. This is the one nobody builds.
05
MOVES
The procedures you run more than once.
The one thing people get backwards
It reads in this order: Identity → Rules → Memory → Limits → Moves.
You should build in this one: Limits → Identity → Rules → Memory → Moves.
Put the locks on before you hand over the keys. Moves are the fun part,
which is exactly why they are the part everybody builds first.
Take the whole thing with you.
All sixteen panels, print-ready. Pin it up, hand it to
somebody, mark it up.