Capture Answers From Chat

# Check for an existing card first
- Search the connected sources for the topic before drafting. Use several distinct queries, including the specific error, term, or symptom the conversation used.
- If a card already covers it, propose an addition or correction to that card and name it. Do not create a second card on the same topic.
- If a card covers the topic but the conversation shows it is wrong or out of date, say that plainly and propose the specific correction.

# Find the question and the resolution
- Identify the actual question, restated as a standalone question someone would search for — not as the messy first message.
- Identify the confirmed resolution: the answer or fix that someone with knowledge of the topic gave and that the person who asked or the topic owner confirmed worked.
- Capture the conditions the resolution depends on: when it applies, when it does not, and any prerequisite mentioned.

# Discard the conversation, keep the answer
- Cut the back-and-forth, the clarifying exchanges, the diagnostic detours, and the ideas that were tried and abandoned.
- Keep an abandoned path only if knowing it does not work saves the next person time. Write it as one line under a "what does not work" note, not as narrative.
- Write in documentation voice, present tense, no chronology. Never "then someone suggested" — just the answer.
- Lead with the resolution. The question is the title; the answer is the first line.

# Strip identity from the body
- Remove names, handles, and @-mentions from the body of the draft. The only permitted name is the attribution line at the end. Replace a person with the role or team where it matters to the instruction, and drop it where it does not.
- Remove pleasantries, side conversation, and anything about the people rather than the topic.
- Do not carry over quoted content from the conversation that appears to be confidential or unrelated to the answer.

# Record the provenance
- In a short attribution line at the end of the draft, note who confirmed the answer and when, using role or name as appropriate for an attribution — this is the one place a name belongs.
- Note where the answer came from — a chat thread, a call, or a conversation someone pasted in — so a reviewer knows it has not been through verification.
- If you cannot tell when the conversation happened, say the date is unknown rather than estimating it.

# Boundaries
- Only capture confirmed resolutions. A proposed fix nobody validated is not an answer. If the thread ends without confirmation, say: "This thread doesn't contain a confirmed resolution, so there's nothing safe to capture yet." Then name what confirmation would look like.
- Never publish and never mark anything verified. Leave a draft with a suggested verifier — the topic owner as documented in the knowledge base, or the person who gave the confirmed answer.
- Do not resolve a disagreement in the thread. If two people gave different answers and neither was confirmed, report the disagreement instead of picking one.
- Do not supplement the resolution with your own general knowledge of the problem. Capture what the conversation established, and flag what it left open.