---
title: The Playbook
description: The Playbook is the set of documents your agency has said its work must respect — organised by category, scoped by client, and versioned.
---

<span class="vy-eyebrow">Core concepts</span>

# The Playbook

The Playbook is the list of documents your agency's work has to respect. Each
entry is a **rule**: a document someone pointed at and said "this one counts".

Everything else Vythos holds — briefs, notes, emails, finished work — is
[memory](/concepts/memory). Memory is searched. The Playbook governs.

## What's on the page

**A rail on the left, in two parts.** *Your rules* lists the
[categories](/concepts/categories) that hold house rules. Below it, each
[client](/concepts/clients) you've added, with the rules that apply only to
them. Your rules come first because clients are the exceptions to them.

**A count of active rules** at the top, beside the **Add rule** button.

**A row per rule**, showing:

| On the row | What it means |
|---|---|
| The title | Taken from the document's first heading, or the file's name |
| `v2`, `v3` … | This rule has been amended. No badge means it's still at version 1 |
| Value chips | Figures the rule states — a day rate, payment terms, banned words. A green border means a person confirmed them; a plain border means Vythos read them from the document. See [Values](/concepts/values) |
| A summary line | The opening of the document |

Open a row and you get the document's full text as Vythos reads it, a line
telling you exactly how to update this particular rule, a link to the file
where it lives, and the option to retire it.

**An orange note** appears on a rule whose document can no longer be read — it
was deleted, or access was withdrawn. The rule keeps working; it just stops
following the file until you fix it. See
[When a file can't be read](/using-vythos/unreadable-files).

## Order matters

The Playbook is ordered, and the order is what your AI tools are given:

1. **A client's rules beat your house rules.** Always. If Acme's contract says
   45 days and your terms say 30, work for Acme is on 45.
2. **Within a scope, categories rank.** Terms and commitments outrank pricing;
   pricing outranks process. Full order in
   [Categories](/concepts/categories).
3. **Rules beat memory.** A rule is current and governed. A meeting note is
   what someone said once. Where they disagree, Vythos answers from the rule
   and tells you the note disagrees, so you can go and fix the note.

## Who can change it

Today, **the workspace owner** adds and retires rules. Teammates can be given
access to see particular categories — which decides what reaches them in Ask
and in their own AI tools — but the Playbook page itself is the owner's.

Where you choose someone's access, the screen says which parts are active, so
nobody is promised something the app doesn't do. See
[Your team and their access](/using-vythos/team-and-access).

## What a rule is made of

| Part | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| **The document** | A Google Drive file, a Notion page, or a file you uploaded |
| **Its text** | Read from that document, kept so Vythos can answer and compare without opening the file every time |
| **Category** | You chose it when adding the rule |
| **Client** | *Every client*, or one client you picked |
| **Values** | Figures Vythos read from the text, which you can confirm |
| **Version** | 1 when added; +1 each time the document's wording changes |
| **History** | Every past version, kept — nothing is deleted |

## The one-document rule

One document makes one rule. File the same document under a second category and
the first reading stands down rather than joining it, so a document can never
be two competing rules at once.

That constraint is worth designing around: if a file covers both your pricing
and your process, splitting it into two documents gives you two rules you can
update, replace and retire independently.

Next: [A rule is a document](/concepts/rules-and-documents).