Tell it who you work with

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The scene

A Thursday in November. The El Roble team finishes on time. All four of them. They even have time to sit down on the terrace at Casa Nieves, the bar next door, without anyone having suggested it.

No one has called a meeting. But the subject comes up, like football or the cold, and within five minutes four things have surfaced.

Sara, now in her second month of answering emails with a little help: “before I ask it for anything, I always write the same paragraph.” Hugo, phone in hand and genuinely puzzled rather than trying to provoke anyone: “well, mine works better for me than the clinic’s.” Diego, who only speaks when he has something to say, looks up: “and where does all this get saved?” Marta realises that she has been explaining who she is since September, and that she explains it all over again every morning.

She was the one who opened the clinic account. It was a good decision, made for a good reason: so that everyone would use the same thing and it would sound the same whoever used it.

And it does sound the same. It sounds equally generic for all four of them.

The nudge

What Hugo says is not a complaint: it is a piece of information. His account has spent months listening to him alone. It has gradually learnt how he writes, what matters to him and who he works for. The shared account has four people using it, and none of them has ever told it who they are.

Sharing without configuring does not add up. It averages out.

And that is what Marta had not seen: they do not each need to pay for their own account. They need to tell the shared one what Hugo’s account already knows about him.

The everyday task

Forty seconds per conversation is not a task. It is a toll. And people pay tolls without complaining until someone adds them up.

But time is not the real problem. The problem is that eleven weeks of method —using your own examples instead of asking for “a warmer tone”, flagging gaps, not taking anything for granted— live inside four people’s heads and are rewritten by hand every morning, each in their own way. The clinic has learnt a great deal, but none of it is written down anywhere.

The unlock

Write it once where it will always be applied.

Under the account menu, in the settings, there is a place to save what the tool knows about you before you write anything to it: across every conversation, both today’s and next month’s. At El Roble, it had been empty since day one.

It takes ten minutes to complete, and then you do not need to touch it again.

And there is a second half to this, the part almost no one mentions: once the context is in place, the drafts arrive looking better. Better organised, more complete, more like you. And a draft that looks better is a draft that receives less scrutiny. So from this point on, do not read everything: check four things.

15:11

Context in action

First: look at everything under your account

Open the settings and scan the whole list once, without going into anything. There is more there than you think. Today we will cover four items; the rest are there, and we will use them in the modules ahead, each one when we need it.

The context Marta would write

This is what she would have written if the account were hers alone. It has been tested over several days and does its job well — if you work alone, copy it and you are done:

=== CONTEXT ===

WHO I AM
I am a clinical veterinarian. I run a small neighbourhood clinic with one other vet, a veterinary assistant and a receptionist. We provide general care for dogs and cats —vaccinations, basic internal medicine, routine surgery and long-term condition monitoring—.

WHERE I WORK
A neighbourhood in a medium-sized Spanish city. Budgets are tight: almost every clinical decision also involves a conversation about what the client can afford. Our clients include older people who have been with us for years and young families who are new to the area. We do not open at weekends.

WHO I AM SPEAKING TO
It depends. Sometimes I am writing for a pet owner, sometimes for the team, sometimes for a supplier and sometimes just for myself.

WHAT YOU MUST NEVER DO
Do not invent clinical details: no doses, protocols, timings or tests. If a detail is missing, flag it as [PENDING] instead of filling it in. Do not assume anything I have not told you.

HOW I WANT THE OUTPUT
It depends on what I ask for. Unless I say otherwise, use continuous prose.

LANGUAGE AND REGISTER
British English.

And there is the problem, in the very first word.

The twist: “I” does not work

“I.” That account does not belong to one person: it belongs to four. If it says “I am a vet”, then when Sara writes from reception she will be talking to an account convinced that she is a vet. That is why Hugo’s own account worked better for him: his account knows who he is.

There is no “I” in a shared account. There is an organisation. That means adding two sections that a personal account can take for granted: who is writing today and who the output is for — along with an instruction to ask when you have not provided that information.

This is the same context, rewritten for the whole team. It is the version saved at El Roble:

=== CLINIC CONTEXT ===

THE ORGANISATION
This is the shared account of a small neighbourhood veterinary clinic: two vets (the owner and one other vet), a veterinary assistant and a receptionist. We provide general care for dogs and cats: vaccinations, basic internal medicine, routine surgery and long-term condition monitoring. We are in a neighbourhood in a medium-sized Spanish city where budgets are tight: almost every clinical decision also involves a conversation about what the client can afford. Our clients include older people who have been with us for years and young families. We do not open at weekends.

WHO IS WRITING
Any member of the team may write, and the role is not always the same: a vet, the receptionist or the veterinary assistant. If my request depends on who I am and I have not told you, ask me before writing.

WHO IT IS FOR
This also varies: sometimes it is for a pet owner, sometimes for the team, sometimes for a supplier and sometimes only for internal use. If I have not told you, ask before choosing the register.

WHAT YOU MUST NEVER DO
Do not invent clinical details: no doses, protocols, timings or tests. If a detail is missing, flag it as [PENDING] instead of filling it in. Do not assume anything we have not told you. Do not turn something we have written as a question or doubt into a statement of fact.

HOW WE WANT THE OUTPUT
It depends on what we ask for. Unless specified otherwise, use continuous prose. Do not generate downloadable documents unless we ask for them.

LANGUAGE
British English.

Saved. This never needs to be written again.

The other three things

Memory. It is not the same as context. You write the context; the tool saves memories by itself, based on what you tell it over time. You can switch it on and off. For a personal account, switch it on. For a shared account, this is a team decision, not something to be decided by whoever happens to get there first: what one person told it on Tuesday may be colouring someone else’s answers on Thursday. If you leave it on, review it once a month and delete anything that no longer belongs there. Knowing where the switch is already gets you halfway there.

Public links. Sharing a conversation is not merely showing it to someone: it means putting a copy on the internet behind a link that works for anyone who has it. The settings show everything you have ever shared. It is worth reviewing the list, especially if any conversation contained a case.

Limits. They exist, which is why there are days when the tool performs worse for no apparent reason. Knowing where to check stops you thinking the tool has suddenly become stupid on a Tuesday.

And the setting the tool cannot make for you

Writing the context is easy. The difficult part —and the only part that requires a real decision— is what not to put there.

Keep clients out of it. The context belongs to you or the clinic, not to the people who walk through the door. Owners’ names, patient details, addresses: none of that needs to live in a setting that is automatically applied to every conversation and opened by four people.

And keep your personal preferences out too. If you say there that you like very short answers, you are imposing that preference on the other three without asking them. And if you tune the context too narrowly for one use case, you make it less useful for everyone else.

The context for a shared account must be written together or it is worthless. Each person knows something the others do not: how to speak to people in the neighbourhood, what clients actually ask during consultations, where information ultimately ends up and what the clinic cannot promise. Ten minutes, all four of you, once.

What you have already built

The best part of this exercise is what happens while you are writing: you realise that you already knew all of it. The six sections of the context are the previous eleven weeks, finally placed somewhere they can work by themselves.

• Who I am / The organisation → what you learnt about explaining the value of your work without sounding like a salesperson, and speaking plainly without treating anyone like a child.
• Who I am speaking to / Who it is for → that you adapt your register to the reader, and that you do not describe your voice; you demonstrate it with your own examples.
• What it must never do → flagging the gap instead of filling it, not assuming what you have not said and retaining the exceptions that a generic summary swallows up.
• How I want the output → your template, the one that gives the document the clinic’s shape from the outset.
• Language → British English, and your own way of using it.

It is not a summary to read. It is a summary that does something.

Do it yourself in 4 steps

1. Open your account settings and find where the instructions applied to every conversation are saved. The name changes every few months: look for “personalise”, “context” or “information about you”. Take care: this is not inside a chat. If you paste it into a conversation, it will only apply there.
2. Copy the template below and complete it. Ten minutes. If several people use the account, fill it in together: each person can contribute one section.
3. Review it by removing things. No client names, no patient details, no preference that belongs only to you. Save it.
4. Start a new conversation —do not continue one you already had open— and work as usual. From now on, check four things instead of reading everything.

Diego’s tip: before writing anything, open the memory and see what has been saved there. You will find things that no one decided to save. Reviewing it once a month takes two minutes and prevents surprises.

The context · copy it

=== YOUR ORGANISATION'S CONTEXT ===

THE ORGANISATION
[Who you are and what you do: team size, type of practice, species. And the neighbourhood: who comes through the door, what factors shape decisions. Any opening hours that never change.]

WHO IS WRITING   ← only if more than one person uses the account
[The roles that use it. Ask the tool to check whenever your request depends on who you are.]

Example: “Any member of the team may write: a vet, the receptionist or the veterinary assistant. If my request depends on who I am and I have not told you, ask me before writing.”

WHO IT IS FOR
[The usual recipients of what you write, with the same rule.]

Example: “Sometimes it is for a pet owner, sometimes for the team, sometimes for a supplier and sometimes only for internal use. If I have not told you, ask before choosing the register.”

WHAT IT MUST NEVER DO
- Do not invent clinical details: no doses, protocols, timings or tests.
- If a detail is missing, flag it as [PENDING] instead of filling it in.
- Do not assume anything we have not told you.
- Do not turn something we have written as a question or doubt into a statement of fact.

[Add your own rules.]

HOW WE WANT THE OUTPUT
[Your default format, so you do not have to repeat it every time. And what you do not want it to do unless you ask.]

Example: “Unless specified otherwise, use continuous prose. Do not generate downloadable documents unless we ask for them.”

LANGUAGE
British English.

And now, the four things to check

With the context in place, the output looks better. That is good news and also a risk, because we skim things that look finished. Make four checks, in this order:

1. The gaps still left inside. [PENDING] saves you while you are working and betrays you as soon as the document looks finished. Search for every occurrence before printing anything.
2. Anything it added even though you did not provide it. A percentage, a washing temperature, an employment category. Plausible, verifiable, defensible — and not yours. It comes from the tool’s general knowledge when it thinks it knows the answer.
3. Your doubts turned into certainties. You write “most likely, to be confirmed” and it gives you back “we have confirmed”. You write “less likely” and it returns “very unlikely”. Each pass moves one step further, and your name is the one at the bottom.
4. The polite phrase that undermines your argument. In a complaint to a supplier, it inserts “communication with your company has always been excellent” as a courtesy, in a letter whose whole argument is that they never reply. That does not come from your context: it is the tool’s factory-set diplomacy.

Go one step further: the rooms still unopened

There is much more under the account menu than we have covered today: how the tool connects to other applications, what you can import and export and what distinguishes one plan from another. There is no need to open everything at once. Open each section when you need it, and they will appear naturally in the modules ahead.

If you want the complete overview, you can download the appendix “Your account settings, reviewed”, which is updated separately — because that part really does change every few months.

Before → Now

Before. A forty-second preamble before every request, several times a day, with a different version from each person. Eleven weeks of method living in four people’s heads and being rewritten by hand every morning. And a shared account that sounded equally generic for all four of them.

Now. Ten minutes, just once, with everyone involved. The best part is not the time you save: it is that what the clinic has learnt no longer depends on who happens to be there that morning.

Before you start

• Context does not save you from reviewing: it requires you to review better. Drafts arrive more complete and looking more polished, so you must check four specific things instead of reading the whole text.
• “Do not invent” does not prevent invention. In our tests, even with that instruction written in the context, a percentage no one had provided and a contract category absent from the notes still appeared. The tool uses [PENDING] when the gap is obvious —a name, a dose— and fills gaps from general knowledge when it thinks it knows. Include the instruction anyway, and review the output anyway.
• Keep client and patient data out of the context. This is not just another setting; it is a place whose content is applied automatically, every time, and opened by anyone using the account.
• A shared account is not ideal, and we are not going to pretend it is. It can be a realistic first step for a small clinic. The day it becomes too limited, that will be obvious — and by then you will know what you need to ask for.
• Be careful not to over-tune it. A context that is too specific to one use case narrows every other use, and on a shared account it narrows them for everyone else too.
• Memory is a decision, not a setting. Switch it on or off deliberately, not by default. And review it: information saved automatically is often saved imperfectly.
• Sharing a conversation means publishing it. Review what you have shared in the past, especially if a conversation contained a case.
• Works on free plans (subject to a daily usage limit). Requires an internet connection: processing takes place in the cloud.

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You have completed Phase 1. The Review is waiting for you: fifteen situations taken from an ordinary Tuesday. It is not a memory test, and you can repeat it as many times as you need. Pass it to unlock Phase 2 and download your training certificate.