Combining the build standards

1. The stack, bottom to top

Each layer reads the one below it and writes nothing into it. Every layer is a published standard, and the bottom one is the long, foundational project most businesses need first.

2. Which standard answers which question

The fastest way to pick a starting point is the question the business is actually asking.

3. The worked example

In September 2026 Yellow Brick Road described an assistant rolled across its broker network: a suite of agents trained on the network’s own data that records the client call, populates the profile, flags missing information, raises follow-ups, searches lender policy and coaches the broker, with a pipeline coach to follow. It is a good brief and it is the shape most multi-office networks will ask for this year.

Decomposed, it is six published jobs and no new ones. Getting the panel, the policy and the manual into one register with owners is the Knowledge Base. Record the call and populate the profile is Advice File. Search lender policy is Cited Answer over a graph of the panel. Flag missing information and raise follow-ups is Advice File’s task check. Coach the pipeline is Database Reactivation. Roll it across the network is Multi-Site Conformance. Coaching the broker is not a seventh job: it is a view over the file and the cards, and if the file is empty the coach is a speech.

What the brief leaves out is the part a regulator will ask about. Which lender clause an answer used, and the date it was live. Who accepted the new edition when the policy moved. Whether the savings figure on the file was said or guessed. Whether a recommendation can leave draft without a person. A model trained on the network cannot be queried for any of those. A graph, a card, a task and a named person can. We would rather the network built it that way than bought our opinion of it, which is why all six are free.

4. The order to build

Seven steps. The first is half a day, the second is the long foundational one, and the rest are afternoons with a coding agent, in this order, because each one reads the one before it.

1. 1

   Write the key contract

   Everything below writes onto it. Field keys for the file, node and edge types for the graph, one version number. Half a day, and the cheapest decision on the page to get wrong later.

   Multi-Site Conformance, section 2

2. 2

   Build the knowledge base

   Every source on one register with a person's name on it, on the Microsoft 365 or Workspace tenant the business already runs, with the watch that notices a changed edition. This is the foundational project and the long one: weeks for a network, because it is a conversation per source. Nothing above it can start until it exists.

   Knowledge Base

3. 3

   Build the graph from the register

   Promote the registered instruments into the graph: typed nodes, scope as an edge, nothing live until a named person accepts it. This is the week the vendor's demo skips.

   Knowledge Graph

4. 4

   Put Cited Answer on top of it

   Staff ask the graph and get a clause with a card, or a decline. Run the detach test on day one, before anyone trusts an answer.

   Cited Answer

5. 5

   Then, and only then, the interview

   Advice File writes into the CRM and attaches cards from the graph. Built earlier, it has nothing to cite and turns into a transcription tool with a confident summary.

   Advice File

6. 6

   Work the book off the file

   Reactivation ranks the pipeline from the completeness and the dates the file already holds. A pipeline coach with no file is a speech about growth.

   Database Reactivation

7. 7

   Score every office off the same keys

   Drift detection over the contract, published on schedule whether or not it found anything. Training material is not a control.

   Multi-Site Conformance

5. What to build and what to buy

Database Reactivation is the one standard above with a product of ours: its live step runs on the Work the List insert. Nothing else in the six is, and each page says so in its provider block. Voice recording, transcription, embedding, the mapper from utterance to field key and the interface can all be bought, and none of them is the hard part.

Three steps are not to be hand-rolled and are not software either. They are data with a person’s name on it: identity taken from the system of record rather than invented by an extractor; the change feed, with a checksum diff and a computed list of what it touches; and acceptance, where nothing reaches live because a model was confident. The Knowledge Graph page names all three, and the Rejected Pack standard named the same three in other words a month earlier.

Where the stack meets a phone call it meets the one step we do sell. A broker’s own interview is not our call, and Advice File does not sell it. An outbound chase or an after-hours line in the same network is, and there the Booked After Hours and Debtor Chasing standards apply, with the live number, the Do Not Call Register wash and the proof id as the insert: Booked After Hours at $119 a month, or Get Paid at $199 a month.

6. Running the checks

Every standard publishes its checks as data, and the conformance harness scaffolds a project that runs red against a local stub until your build goes green. One folder per standard, in the order above:

npx @aipathway/conformance init multi-site-conformance-build-standard
npx @aipathway/conformance init knowledge-base-build-standard
npx @aipathway/conformance init knowledge-graph-build-standard
npx @aipathway/conformance init cited-answer-build-standard
npx @aipathway/conformance init advice-file-build-standard
npx @aipathway/conformance init database-reactivation-build-standard

cd knowledge-graph-build-standard && node run.mjs   # red, then green

The checks a stub cannot pass, the pass tests, report as ours to run rather than failing you. For these five there is no hosted step (Database Reactivation is the exception: its live step runs on the Work the List insert), so in production they run against your own CRM tenant and your own accepted library. No own-systems standard has a live port map yet, so the harness proves the stub only: run the pass test by hand and attach the evidence.

Handing it to a coding agent? Start it on the graph, not on the file.

7. The cash path

The knowledge stack is one way the standards combine. The cash path is the other, and most trade and service businesses need it first. Four standards, in the order the money moves: the call writes the job, the quote is drafted from that job, the invoice is raised from the accepted quote or the completed job, and the chase runs off the live ledger.

Each of the four passes on its own, and none of them fails if the id dies between two of them. The Cash Seam standard is the one that does. The job id written on the call is the id the quote reads. The accepted quote id is what the invoice is raised from. The invoice id is what the chase reads off the ledger. Each record carries the id of the one before it and the name of whoever owns the exception, and nothing invents a second record.

Build them in stack order, one folder each, and run the seam last, once the four are green on their own:

npx @aipathway/conformance init booked-after-hours-build-standard
npx @aipathway/conformance init quote-out-build-standard
npx @aipathway/conformance init invoice-out-build-standard
npx @aipathway/conformance init debtor-chasing-build-standard
npx @aipathway/conformance init cash-seam-build-standard

cd cash-seam-build-standard && node run.mjs   # red, then green

Unlike this page, the cash path has hosted steps: the job write and the quote draft run on Booked After Hours, and the invoice draft and the chase run on Get Paid. The seam adds no product of its own. Its step not to hand-roll is the same at every hop: the id taken from the system of record, and one authenticated write that comes back with its id.

8. What this is not

• It is not a brief to fine-tune a model on the aggregator’s shared drive.
• It is not permission to put a chat box next to the CRM and call the file updated.
• It is not a substitute for a responsible-lending assessment, a certificate or a signature.
• It is not training. Training is what you do in a room. Control is what you can score when the trainer has gone.
• It is not the whole roadmap either. This is the stack for a network that wants an assistant on its own material. The ladder every business climbs, cash first, is at the roadmap.
• It is not a seventh standard. It carries no checks and no pass test. The six it points at carry all of them.