The problem
Useful company context was scattered across documents, meeting notes, messages, department records, and the memories of individual team members. A normal search box could find files, but it could not explain how a decision, client, task, and owner related to one another. The system also had to preserve existing access boundaries instead of turning every connected source into one open database.
The system response
I built the Business Brain as a governed knowledge and workflow layer, not as a generic chatbot.
The working system includes:
- Separate company and department vaults with defined ownership
- A knowledge editor for reviewing and updating approved material
- Retrieval that keeps the supporting source attached to an answer
- Integration paths for meetings, messages, documents, and operating systems
- Approval boundaries before the system creates or changes business records
- A repeatable vault setup that keeps credentials and private exports out of the knowledge base
What shipped
The current build gives an authorized team member one place to maintain approved knowledge and retrieve context without losing the source record. Department vaults remain separate, updates have a review path, and operational actions can be added one controlled workflow at a time.
Connects fragmented company knowledge into source-backed answers while keeping department access and outbound actions controlled.
Architecture decisions
- Keep the main vault separate from department vaults so ownership and access rules stay visible
- Store durable knowledge in versioned files while source systems remain the system of record
- Retrieve supporting passages before drafting an answer and keep citations with the response
- Separate read access from tools that can create tasks, update records, or trigger workflows
- Review ingestion, stale content, and permission changes as operating work, not one-time setup
Release checks
- Confirm a user can retrieve approved material and cannot retrieve a restricted department vault
- Check that an answer links back to the passage or record that supports it
- Remove a test document, refresh the index, and confirm it no longer appears in retrieval results
- Require approval before a test action changes an external business record
