Universal internal knowledge search

Requirements describe capabilities the pattern needs in your environment, not the vendors you must buy. Any system that fills a requirement satisfies it — that’s what makes the catalog portable across the long tail of SMB tooling.

1. knowledge_corpus_set

   REQUIREDREADcorpus

   The collection of sources the pattern indexes and searches. Plural because most firms have several disjoint stores.

   DATA SHAPE

   Documents, pages, threads, tickets from multiple sources. Each indexed with title, source system, last-modified date, author, access permissions.
   COMMONLY FILLED BY

   • internal wiki
   • shared document drive
   • archived project folders
   • internal blog or announcements
   • historical support tickets
   • past chat threads in select channels
2. user_query_surface

   REQUIREDREAD + WRITErequest

   Where people actually ask. Has to be where they already are, not a separate tool they have to remember to use.

   DATA SHAPE

   Natural language question with the asking user's identity (for permissions filtering) and any context about what they're working on.
   COMMONLY FILLED BY

   • chat slash command or DM to a bot
   • search bar embedded in the wiki
   • browser extension that activates on highlight
   • command palette in the firm's working tools
3. permission_resolver

   REQUIREDREADrequest

   Determines which sources and documents the asking user is allowed to see. Critical: the pattern must never return content the user doesn't have access to in the source system.

   DATA SHAPE

   Per-user-per-document permission lookup, or per-user-per-source-tag.
   COMMONLY FILLED BY

   • SSO identity tied to source-system permissions
   • permission groups maintained per source
   • permission inheritance from the source systems themselves (preferred)
4. answer_destination

   REQUIREDWRITErequest

   Where the synthesized answer with citations goes back to the user.

   DATA SHAPE

   Answer text with inline citations linking to source documents. Includes a confidence indicator and explicit 'I don't know' option.
   COMMONLY FILLED BY

   • reply in chat thread or DM
   • answer panel in the wiki
   • browser extension overlay
   • command palette result
5. feedback_capture

   RECOMMENDEDWRITEevent

   Per-answer thumbs-up/down or correction. Without this, the pattern's accuracy is invisible.

   DATA SHAPE

   Per-query feedback: query, answer, sources cited, user rating, optional correction.
   IF MISSING

   Pattern works but quality drift is invisible. The team has no idea whether the answers are good. Strongly recommend at minimum a thumbs widget.
   COMMONLY FILLED BY

   • thumbs widget under each answer
   • follow-up chat reaction the user can use
   • weekly digest of queries asking for ratings
6. user_role_context

   OPTIONALREADrequest

   What role the asking user has. Lets the answer adjust depth and framing — engineers get technical detail, salespeople get the business-facing version.

   DATA SHAPE

   Per-user role tag, team, seniority.
   IF MISSING

   Answers stay neutral in framing. Works fine for most queries; only noticeably worse when the same content needs different framings for different audiences.
   COMMONLY FILLED BY

   • HR system role lookup
   • directory or org chart
   • user profile in the firm's working tools