Knowledge Routing

Knowledge gets re-explained and re-derived for one of two reasons: it is trapped in a place only one actor can read, or it is duplicated across several places that drift apart. The fix is a single rule: capture once, route to the one right home by type, and point — never copy.

The routing rule

If a thing is two types, split it: the reusable part becomes a skill, the specific fact becomes a memory, and each points at the other.

Read from the same home you write to

Before asking a human or re-solving a problem, check the system of record first — the home a piece of knowledge would route to is the home you read it from. "Ask the person" is the last resort, not the first; most of what feels like a missing answer is already captured somewhere readable.

Capture once, propagate by tooling

The artifact is the source. Tooling (a bundle, a sync, a build) distributes it to every consumer. You never hand-copy the content into N files — the copy is how drift starts. Changing the behavior means changing the one source, then letting propagation carry it.

Anti-patterns

• Pasting skill content into a config file. The config should hold a pointer ("follow the x skill"), not a second copy that will rot.
• Filing a reusable construct as a one-off note. If others will reuse it, it is a skill, not a buried memory.
• A new parallel doc for something already documented. Extend the canonical one; do not fork it.
• Asking for what is already recorded. That is a read miss, not a knowledge gap — fix your lookup, not the source.

The test

For anything worth keeping, answer: "Where is the ONE place this lives, and how does everyone else read it without me telling them?" If the answer is "in my head" or "in three places," route it.