Decide what goes into a source-grounded tool

Decide what goes in and what stays out before loading anything.

***A source-grounded tool answers from what you give it. What you leave out, it cannot know — and it will not tell you it is missing.***

1. **State the question the set has to answer.** ***If it is several questions, say which sources each needs*** — **one pile for two questions produces answers blended from the wrong documents**
2. **Per candidate source:** what it covers / **when it is from** / ***whether it is primary or someone's summary of a primary***
3. **What to exclude and why:**
   - **Superseded versions** — ***the most damaging inclusion.* **Old and new of the same document produces confidently contradictory answers**
   - **Duplicates in different formats** — ***they make one claim look corroborated***
   - **Anything off-topic** — it dilutes retrieval
4. **What is missing** — ***the sources this question needs that I do not have.* **Say what kind, and where it would come from**
5. **Order** — what to load first, if the set is large

**Then:**
- **What the set cannot answer**, given what is in it. ***Write this down before asking anything*** — **afterwards, a fluent answer will make it hard to remember there was a gap**
- **Which sources disagree with each other**, if I can already tell. *That is a feature, not a problem — but only if you know it is there*

⚠️ ***Do not state what this tool can or cannot do, its limits, or its settings from memory*** — **these change constantly and a wrong one wastes a session.** Write `[confirm in the tool]`.