Domain interviewer bot architecture

AI Agents Work Better When They Actually Know How You Operate

TL;DR AI agents fail when they don’t know what you know. I built a Slack bot that conducts structured 5-layer interviews to extract tacit knowledge — operating rhythms, decision criteria, dependencies, friction points, leverage opportunities — and generates soul.md, user.md, and heartbeat.md config files for provisioning agents. The interview surfaces ~30% more actionable context than documentation alone. Full source code below. The Problem Nobody’s Talking About Nate B. Jones has a video that nails the core issue with AI agents: they fail because they lack tacit knowledge. Not the stuff in your docs — the stuff in your head. The 20-year veteran who just knows that the staging deploy takes longer on Thursdays because the batch job runs. The designer who can feel when a color palette is wrong without being able to articulate why. ...

April 16, 2026 · 11 min · zolty

Affiliate Disclosure: Some links on this site are affiliate links (Amazon Associates, DigitalOcean referral). As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. This does not affect the price you pay or my editorial independence — I only recommend products and services I personally use and trust.