Build Once
When work happens in conversation, the documentation already exists. You just have to keep it. The question shifts from "did you document this?" to "is your conversation findable?"
Inspiration
Source: "The Transcript as Work Product" — Ash's agency river essay on how conversation transcripts ARE documentation. The distinction between doing work and documenting work is collapsing.
Core metaphors: - Retrieval tax (hidden cost of re-deriving decisions you can't find) - Context debt (accumulates when conversations disappear—interest payments are invisible) - Crystallization (conversation fragments solidifying into retrievable artifacts) - Building once vs building twice
Emotional arc: From the problem (documentation as separate task = debt by design, the write-up never happens) → the insight (transcript IS the artifact) → the cost of not knowing (retrieval tax, solving twice) → the practical shift (save, file, search) → the challenge ("how many problems have you solved twice?")
Potential hooks: - "The transcript is the artifact" - "Is your conversation findable?" - "You're not building twice / You're building once and preserving" - "How many problems have you solved twice?" - "Context debt is what accumulates"
Feel: Driving, urgent but not frantic. Agency river energy—forward momentum, anthemic hooks. This is about reclaiming time, about infrastructure that works for you. Should feel like efficiency clicking into place, like the relief of finding something you thought was lost.
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Style Prompt
Progressive grunge, 130 BPM, driving and urgent, choppy palm-muted guitar in verses opening to articulate power chords in chorus, locked bass and guitar as single percussive unit, male vocals smart and assertive, anthemic hooks, the sound of an argument being won, agency river energy
Lyrics
Every conversation vanishes
The moment that it ends
And then you're searching through your memory
For decisions you can't find again
Documentation as a separate task
Is debt designed in
You finish solving something
Then you start from scratch to pin it down again
The transcript is the artifact
The conversation IS the doc
You're not building twice—
Build once and keep the clock
Is your conversation findable?
Can you get back what you said?
Context debt is what accumulates
Every time you lose the thread
Build once—build once
The work is in the words
Build once—build once
Let the transcript be preserved
I used to think that documentation
Was the thing you did at the end
Separate artifact, separate time
A tax on what you'd spent
But the work was in the conversation
The decisions lived right there
I wasn't failing to document—
I was letting documentation disappear
The transcript is the artifact
The conversation IS the doc
You're not building twice—
Build once and keep the clock
Is your conversation findable?
Can you get back what you said?
Context debt is what accumulates
Every time you lose the thread
Build once—build once
The work is in the words
Build once—build once
Let the transcript be preserved
The retrieval tax is hidden
But you're paying it in hours
Re-deriving what you figured out
Because the finding overpowers
The time it takes to solve it once—
That's not the problem here
The problem is you solved it once
And then it disappeared
Crystallize or lose it
Those are the only two
The conversation wants to help you
But it can't if it can't find you
How many problems have you solved twice?
How many decisions have you re-made?
How much of your life is retrieval—
Finding what you forgot you'd saved?
The transcript is the artifact
The conversation IS the doc
You're not building twice—
Build once and keep the clock
Is your conversation findable?
Can you get back what you said?
Context debt is what accumulates—
Don't let it take your thread
Build once—build once
The work is in the words
Build once—build once
Stop solving twice
Build once
