The process

You answer the questions. The answers become the rules.

When we're done, nothing in it depends on me.

Four stages. You declare the third one. Nobody else can.

1. It starts with a seed

A structure arrives, empty and labeled. Every folder says what it's for, whether or not anything is in it yet.
Your AI reads those labels too. That's how it knows where things go without being told each time.
A few base rules are in force from the first minute. Records are written once and never revised. Decisions are recorded with the alternatives that were rejected. Facts and reasoning are kept apart.
Everything else is open. The structure is the hard part, and it's done. Filling it in is yours.

This isn't a document to read and agree with. It's questions to answer, with your AI, in a sitting or two.

Each answer justifies something. A folder earns its place by having an answer written beneath it.
A folder with no answer gets deleted. That's the process working, not a failure.
Nothing is wrong yet. This stage is fluid on purpose. Sketch, change your mind, start over.

The fifth question is the one people get the most out of. It's the guardrail conversation, in your words, before any agent runs.

Not the AI. Not on a schedule. Not me.
From that moment the rules bind. Decisions are settled. Agents operate inside them.
The honest answer is often "not yet." Stopping there is the process working.

Finishing the questions and being founded are the same event.

Your agents work inside your protocol. Attended or autonomous, one or dozens, through the tools your people already use.

Document what we have. A project that reads what exists and writes it down where it stays.
Research this. A topic goes out, facts come back with their sources, and the knowledge is kept.
Both end. What they produce doesn't. That's the difference between a project and a knowledge base, and it's built into the shape.

Your attention, early. The people who actually run the work answer the founding questions. Not a delegate, and not me.
A couple of rounds of discussion, not months. We talk it through, I write it down, you read it back and correct it. Then once more. How long each round takes depends on how much your business already has written down.
Nobody gets this right on the first pass. It's a process, like tailoring a suit. We measure twice, build your AI protocol, then adjust it as you grow into it.
You run it. Together, we watch where it rubs and change it. Then we do that again.
I can't promise you my numbers. What you get is the process that produced them, built around your business and the way your people think.

When we're done, nothing in it depends on me.
It's in files you own, readable without the tool that made them.
It carries no trace of the conversation that built it. Your protocol doesn't point back at me.
The answers are yours, so you'll follow them. Copy somebody else's rules and people go through the motions, or they ignore it.