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Which documents to add first

A rule is a document your work has to respect. Most of what an agency writes isn't that — it's evidence of what happened, which belongs in memory, where it's searchable but never binding.

The test: if someone did the opposite of this document, would it be a mistake? If yes, it's a rule. If it would merely be different, it's memory.

The first five

Start here. Most agencies have four of these already, in some form.

Document	Category	Why it's first
Rate card	Pricing & rates	The most-quoted numbers you own, and the ones most often quoted wrong. Add it even if it's a single page.
Terms of business, MSA or contract template	Terms & commitments	Payment terms, notice, IP, liability. The things a proposal gets wrong quietly.
Brand voice and tone guidelines	Brand & voice	Also the one with words to avoid — the rule an AI draft breaks most often, and one Vythos can check for you.
How you run a project	How we work	Stages, revision rounds, what "done" means. Stops every freelancer inventing their own process.
Who signs off on what	Who decides	Spend limits and approval stages. Short, and it prevents the most expensive kind of mistake.

Five documents is a working Playbook. You don't need more to feel the difference.

Then, for each client you work for

Client rules override your house defaults for that client, and only for that client. Add them as you need them, not all at once.

• Their brand guidelines, if they gave you any — in Brand & voice, scoped to that client.
• Their contract, where the terms differ from yours — in Terms & commitments. This is what stops a proposal going out at your standard payment terms when that client negotiated different ones.
• Anything they've told you never to do. A line in an email is enough if you put it in a document.

See Clients for how to add one.

What to leave in memory

Connect these as sources so they're searchable, but don't make them rules:

• Proposals and pitches. They record what you offered once, not what you charge.
• Invoices. A number in an invoice is a fact about one job.
• Meeting notes and emails. Useful context, frequently out of date.
• Case studies and finished work. Evidence, not instruction.
• Briefs. They describe a job, not your standards.

Vythos never promotes any of these to rules on its own — however much a document looks like policy. An invoice states a number with great authority, and it governs nothing.

A few judgement calls

A document that's half rule, half example. Brand guidelines with a page of sample copy are fine as a rule — the examples don't hurt. A proposal template with your terms buried in it is better split: make the terms a document of their own.

A rate card per client. Perfectly normal. Add the house rate card for every client, then each negotiated one scoped to its client. The client one wins for that client.

A document nobody has updated in two years. Add it if it's still true. If you're not sure it's true, that uncertainty is exactly what your team is already working with — and once it's a rule, the date it was last changed is visible to everyone.

A policy that lives in a Slack message. Not yet a document. Paste it into a one-page doc in Drive or Notion, then name it. It takes two minutes and it's the only version of it that can be kept current.

Size and shape

• One document, one rule. If a file covers pricing and your process, Vythos files it under one category. Splitting it into two documents gives you two rules that can be updated and retired separately.
• Long documents are fine. Vythos reads the whole file, tables included.
• Scanned PDFs are not. A PDF that's a photograph of a page has no text to read. Re-export it from the original, or retype the page that matters.
• Naming matters a little. A rule is titled from the document's first heading, or from the file's name if it has no heading. "Rate Card 2026" reads better in a list than "final_v3_ACTUAL".

Next: The Playbook — what you've just built, and how Vythos orders it.