Sources
A pack answers, learns, and works from four kinds of source. You can see the sources. They show why a pack knows something and how fresh that knowledge is. The source does not decide which action you take. A question that needs live data is still an ask.
| Source | What it supplies | Freshness contract |
|---|---|---|
| Knowledge | Learned files, pages, definitions, and research (added with teach) |
Fresh as of its last accepted teach or refresh |
| Connection | Live state from connected applications | Read live. Health shows the latest successful access |
| Data Source | SQL-backed organizational data, modeled into a queryable semantic layer | Rows are queried live. The semantic model’s freshness is reported separately |
| Pack Reference | Published understanding inherited from another pack | Read live from the upstream pack, which stays credited as the source |
ask and task can read all four. teach changes only the target pack’s own durable understanding. It does not copy live source contents into the pack.
What each action records
Section titled “What each action records”Ask
- Attributes evidence to both source and pack.
- Keeps disagreement between packs visible. It does not blend it into one answer.
- Shows relevant “as of” freshness information.
- Declines instead of guessing when the pack can’t ground an answer.
Teach
- Records who made each contribution and where it came from.
- Shows conflicts before it replaces important understanding.
- Reports when processing (chunk → embed → index) isn’t complete yet.
- Keeps correction and removal history. Nothing is overwritten without a record.
Task
- Shows which pack owns the task.
- Shows sources used and any external actions taken.
- Keeps the task’s result separate from what the pack retained.
- Keeps scheduled-run and review history.
Pack references: building on other packs
Section titled “Pack references: building on other packs”A pack can build on public upstream packs. Those references are part of the material that ask and task can read in that pack. Asking a pack never copies the upstream pack. It never exposes the upstream pack’s live private connections. A task can’t write back to an upstream pack it doesn’t own.
PACK.md: steering, not knowledge
Section titled “PACK.md: steering, not knowledge”PACK.md is the pack’s standing guidance. It is used alongside the four sources, but it is not a source. The whole file is read into the routing of every ask, before the first decision. It is the only place that changes how a pack works, not what it knows. It holds vocabulary the pack can’t find automatically, which source to trust for a kind of question, and what the pack does not cover on purpose.
See Steering with PACK.md for what belongs in it, and edisyl pack context for the read/write/history commands. Editing PACK.md is CLI only.
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