Core concepts

Clients and scope

Every rule has a scope: either every client — your house default — or one named client.

This is the single most valuable thing in the Playbook, because it's the thing people get wrong under time pressure. Your standard terms say 30 days. One client negotiated 45. Everyone knows that, until the proposal is written at half past six by someone who wasn't in that meeting.

How scope works

• A client rule wins. For work for that client, their rule replaces your house rule in the same category. Nothing is merged, nothing is averaged.
• It wins across categories too. Scope is checked before category, so a client's Brand & voice rule outranks every house rule, whatever its category.
• Where a client has no rule, your house rules apply. You don't have to duplicate anything. Add the two or three documents where that client differs.

Adding a client

Clients are added by hand, on the Playbook page — type the name and confirm. Vythos does not scan your documents for client names and invent accounts; if a client exists, it's because someone typed it.

Once a client exists, Which client is it for? in the Add rule card offers them. See Clients for the steps.

How Vythos knows which client work is for

In Ask: from your question. "What are Acme's payment terms?" is recognised as being about Acme, and their rules come back ahead of your defaults.

From an AI tool: the tool can name the client. If it doesn't, Vythos reads the client out of the task description the same way Ask does.

Matching is against your list of clients, not a guess. An unrecognised name matches nothing, and an ambiguous one — two clients whose names overlap — matches nothing rather than picking. Vythos never invents a client, and never creates one from a mention.

Naming a client grants nothing

Client detection decides what is asked for, never what is allowed. If a teammate is restricted to one client, naming another returns nothing at all. Access is checked separately, every time. See Your team and their access.

When no client is named

Work that names no client gets your house rules only. Client rules are deliberately left out — an agent writing Acme's brief must not be handed another client's terms.

But an AI tool is also told, in the same breath, that an exception exists: which client and which category, never what it says. So a tool can say "there are pricing rules specific to this client — tell me who this is for" instead of confidently quoting your default.

Restricting someone to particular clients

When you invite a teammate you can assign them clients. Assign none and they see every client's rules, within the categories they have access to. Assign one or more and those are the only client rules that reach them — in Ask and in their own AI tools.

Useful for freelancers who work on one account, and for contractors you'd rather not show your whole book to.

Retiring a client's rules

A client rule is retired like any other, from its row on the Playbook. The client stays; their rules stop applying. If an engagement ends, retire the rules that were specific to them — otherwise their terms keep outranking your defaults for work that mentions their name.

Next: Values.