Before the build,
ask better questions.

Feeds into: the constitution, house rules, company facts

1. REQLegal business name, exactly as it must appear
2. REQThe name rule: how the name always appears, and how it must never appear. Abbreviations, the comma before LLC, permitted short forms
3. REQThe one-liner: what you do, for whom, in one sentence
4. The thirty-second version, an elevator paragraph
5. REQWhat you do NOT do, and what you never want to be mistaken for
6. REQIndustry, plus regulated flags: health, legal, financial, insurance
7. Geography served, which becomes a hard rule if the answer is one state
8. Web presence: domains, socials, existing live pages

Feeds into: governance and the org facts

1. REQOwner and final approver: name, role, contact
2. REQThe brain operator, whoever runs the AI day to day
3. Additional approvers, and what each may approve
4. Team roster: name, role, contact, headshot
5. REQThe money, legal and external-send gate: who can never be bypassed

Feeds into: the target-audience files, two to four of them

1. REQA label, like HOA board member, and who they actually are
2. What they want, and what they fear
3. Words they use, and words that turn them off
4. The single action we want from them
5. REQWhich one is the hero audience. Exactly one yes

Feeds into: the voice files

1. REQThree to five voice adjectives
2. REQThe default tone, picked from seven named registers
3. Approved signature phrases: things you actually say
4. REQBanned words and phrases
5. REQThree writing samples you love, yours or anyone’s, for reverse-engineering the voice
6. Mechanics: emoji policy, exclamation policy, whether humor is allowed

Feeds into: the guardrails

1. REQThis AI must NEVER… say, do, or claim
2. REQPricing publishing policy: public, quote-only, never published, or gated
3. Claims we can prove, each with its source, versus claims we must never make
4. Competitor mention policy
5. Anything low-profile or confidential the system must protect
6. House mechanics: date format, phone format, dash policy, capitalisation

Feeds into: the facts layer, the part everything else cites

1. REQServices and products: plain-English description, who it is for, price or range, timeline, which one is the flagship
2. REQPricing detail, and exactly what is quotable
3. Credentials, licenses, certifications, awards. Verifiable only
4. Founding story, history, key dates
5. Stats you can cite, each with its source
6. REQThe top ten questions clients ask, with your best answers
7. Testimonials, with written-permission status per quote
8. REQThe document upload manifest: decks, price lists, sample deliverables, SOPs. Preserved verbatim

Feeds into: competitor and SEO facts, and module triggers

1. Top three to five competitors, with your one-line take on each. Verified by live search at build time
2. Service area detail: cities and regions, ranked
3. Why you win: two to four pillars
4. SEO ambition, and target searches if known
5. Where clients actually come from today

Feeds into: the Brand OS, and house style

1. REQBrand maturity: a full Brand OS exists, or logo and colors only, or starting from scratch
2. Upload manifest: logos, fonts, guideline documents, collateral you love
3. Known color codes
4. Visual direction words, and brands you admire
5. The visual never-list
6. If starting from less than a full system: the Brand OS build request is generated automatically, and audited against a five-part contract before assembly proceeds

Feeds into: skills, templates, and the routing table

1. REQPick from the catalog: print, web, email, presentations, social, business documents, sales and ops
2. REQThe first three pieces you need on day one. These become the reference gold standards, built first

Feeds into: optional modules and integrations

1. Website: keep existing, rebuild inside the brain, or none
2. A content and SEO engine, yes or no
3. Partner or account kits, and the list of accounts
4. Team size, which selects the workflow-zone variant
5. Meeting and transcript filing
6. Accounts that exist: repository, hosting, workspace, CRM, email sender. Credentials are never collected on a form, dashboard-only, as a rule

Feeds into: the memory layer

1. Decisions already locked, which the AI must not reopen
2. Known unknowns, seeded straight into the questions register
3. In-flight work: campaigns, launches, deadlines