Entity docs is the third component of the Truth vault, after the Digital brain and Capture and Share. It is the front door of the vault: the place that gathers the facts to put out in public, laid out as a set of docs for everyone to read, easy to read and easy to navigate.
Open means public: you open the vault up, promise to keep it current, and take feedback from readers. The structure of the vault is easy to read for people and for AI.
Facts reach Entity docs through Capture and Share: what you capture goes into the Digital brain, and once it is done and has a result, you share it right away on Entity docs. Then you reuse it on any channel you like.
Only record what you really did
The rule is you do it for real, you record it for real. The vault records what is true now about your product and brand. What is not in the vault does not exist.
Record what is true today
The vault records what is true now, removes what is false now, records the mistakes of the past, and never records the future. The past is stored so you know the history.
| What happened | Goes into the vault? |
|---|---|
| The product gets a new feature | Yes, record the new feature |
| A feature is dropped | Yes, record that it is dropped |
| A real bug is fixed | Yes, record the bug and how it was fixed |
| A customer gives real feedback | Yes |
| You work differently than 6 months or 1 year ago | Yes, record how you work now |
| A philosophy is expanded to be more complete | Yes |
| An employee leaves | Yes, remove them from the team list |
| Plans, wishes, goals | No, record them somewhere else |
| A product that has not launched | No, keep it on the sales page or the pre-signup page |
The vault usually has a changelog, updated at the same time as the pages.
No plans in the vault
If you record what does not exist yet, you invent something that never was. Then the vault becomes a lying vault, and it is no longer a Truth vault.
For a plan, go and do it. While you work, you will see what is true and what is not. Record what is true. You can draft a structure somewhere else, but do not publish an empty frame in the vault. Whatever is published must be full content.
How is it different from the Digital brain?
Notes in the Digital brain are where you store your thoughts. The Truth vault is where you record what you have done. They are two different places, and Entity docs is not a place for notes.
Without Entity docs, the facts stay hidden inside the Digital brain. You separate what is secret from what is public: the secrets stay in the Digital brain, and what is public goes out to Entity docs.
| Entity docs | Digital brain | |
|---|---|---|
| Who sees it | Everyone | Usually kept private, a business secret |
| Who gives feedback | Customers, team, readers | Only you |
| Scope | One brand, one domain, one product | A whole life, 10 to 40 years |
| What it holds | Work done, true now | Thoughts, ideas, plans |
| Which AI can read it | Your AI and outside AI | Only your AI |
When does a note become docs?
A note enters the vault when it passes three conditions:
- It was done for real and has a result, good or bad. An idea you have not tried is still a note, however much you believe in it.
- It is fully developed into a concept, a guide, a philosophy, a formula or a process. One line of note put on the site is a thin page that cannot stand alone, so merge it into a related page.
- It is still true now. If something was true from an old experience, check it once more, with the internet, AI or another way, before it goes into the vault.
Out of 10 or 20 notes, only 2 or 3 get done, get checked and become docs. That is normal. A note that copies what someone else said does not enter the vault, because it is not your brand asset. Notes and docs are not cut off from each other: docs are the next step of a note.
Customers only read what is public
Even with notes, you still need the vault. Your AI can read your notes, but customers and outside AI cannot. People read your public vault. What you are already willing to share is public for good, so others and their AI can read it too.
Copied docs make a dead vault
A dead vault holds documents that are not yours: copied from somewhere, duplicated, or summed up by AI. You cannot update that vault, because that vault does not follow the work you do. The Truth vault follows your progress and your product, so the Truth vault is alive.
Who reads it and who updates it?
The vault has five groups of readers: customers, team, employees, you, and AI. You write once and serve all five, even when you turn the content into video.
The team looks at one place
Product, marketing and sales are three different jobs. Without a vault, these three do not connect and drift apart. With a vault, everyone looks at one place:
- The marketer knows what features the product has, what is good about them and how to use them.
- The salesperson knows which feature goes with which price, and their history.
- The customer care person knows right away what is new, so they can go back to customers and sell more.
This lets you delegate. When you are away, the vault is still there for everyone to follow. Without a vault, what you think and do not say out loud is unknown to the people working with you, and the number of meetings doubles.
You are the one who updates it
The person who updates the vault is you. When you work alone, you are the only person responsible for updating the vault, and the vault always comes before the post.
The vault is updated every day, because you take notes every day. Of the 10 or 20 things you do in a day, the ones that produce a result go into the vault. On a day that produces no result, there is nothing to update.
When someone else writes content from the vault, they are responsible to the vault. If anyone writes something that does not match the vault, you can point to the error and remind them. Without a vault, you only have stories and old posts to hand out work, and the person who gets it can easily get the positioning, strategy or features wrong.
Posts drift apart without the vault
The cuongthach.com site has seen drift in both ways of working:
| How you work | What happened |
|---|---|
| Two people working together | The person who built the product knows the product but not the marketing strategy. The marketer does not understand the product. Posts start to drift apart |
| Working alone | Old content, especially how-to posts, cannot be updated |
Two posts that disagree become three, then four, like a story that changes every time it is retold. Even with AI, it cannot fix them without one place declared as the source to compare against.
Related pages
- It does not store thoughts, plans or documents copied from other people.
- It does not tell a story to customers. Each page only states facts, the way the Source of evidence is written.
- It does not update itself. You update the vault first, then fix your posts.
- The story and the view behind this page are in How are business docs different from notes and a blog?.