How Jackdaw works
How Jackdaw turns scattered, changing information into a current state people and agents can safely use.
Jackdaw turns the things your team writes, decides, and connects into a current, source-backed operating context. Seven ideas explain the system.
The wiki holds the work and its current state
The Wiki is a set of connected pages for the people, projects, organizations, decisions, goals, and playbooks that matter. A page can hold notes written by the team alongside structured facts, sources, owners, and relationships.
That makes the Wiki more than a collection of documents. It shows how the work fits together and gives people and agents one place to inspect the state they are expected to use. Jackdaw creates and updates the structure; it never generates the page’s narrative. Using the wiki covers the surface.
Facts carry meaning
Under the prose, Jackdaw stores discrete facts. Each one has a type because the type changes how an agent should treat it:
| Type | Means | Example |
|---|---|---|
fact | something currently known | “Northwind is in security review” |
preference | how the team usually wants work handled | “Lead the weekly update with blockers” |
constraint | a rule that must not be crossed | “Do not promise rollout before security clearance” |
decision | a choice the team settled | “Ship guest checkout behind the flag” |
goal | an outcome the team is working toward | “Ship guest checkout without losing saved carts” |
rejection | an option that was considered and ruled out | “No bulk migration before fallback testing” |
correction | a precise fix to an earlier claim | “The owner is Priya, not Maya” |
A preference may bend; a constraint should not. Typing the information lets agents behave accordingly instead of guessing from prose.
Every claim traces back to a source
Jackdaw does not store free-floating claims. Each fact carries its provenance — where it came from and the evidence behind it. Linked content connects emails, notes, messages, meetings, code, and agent work to the page where each source matters.
That means anyone can inspect not only the current answer, but why the team believes it.
Current does not erase history
A fact has a lifespan. When a decision changes, Jackdaw does not silently overwrite the old version. The replacement becomes current while the earlier version remains visible as superseded.
This distinction matters when an old plan, a later proposal, and the approved decision are all still searchable. A connected agent should act from the current decision without losing the history needed to explain how the team got there.
Authority settles uncertainty
Jackdaw connects related information and detects when sources disagree, but it does not appoint itself the judge of the team’s intent. It brings consequential conflicts to the appropriate person and preserves the resulting decision with its evidence, conditions, and limits.
The review rule is: We save what you tell us. We ask about what we figure out. Answers you give directly can land immediately. Identity details, conflicts with something already established, and inferred claims wait for review. See Reviewing what Jackdaw captures.
People and agents read the same state
When a connected AI asks Jackdaw a question, it does not receive an entire workspace dump. Jackdaw returns a ranked, relevant slice of the current state — the people, projects, decisions, evidence, and constraints that matter for that question — within the permissions of the requesting person or agent.
This is how a teammate reading a Wiki page and an agent acting through MCP can work from the same settled context. Connect via MCP covers the tools.
Useful learning comes back
Agents can propose durable facts and supported actions as they work. Those proposals return to Jackdaw for the appropriate review instead of disappearing into a run log or silently changing the team’s source of truth.
Once accepted, that learning can improve every later run — not only the agent that discovered it.
Work stays inside its boundaries
Every piece of context belongs to a workspace: the boundary around a group of people, their connected sources, and what they may share. Personal, family, and team contexts remain separate. Within a workspace, permissions and agent guardrails still control who may see information and what may be done with it. See Workspaces & teams.