What is an aDNA graph?

By the end of this lesson you can:

• Explain an aDNA graph to someone else in one sentence
• Name the three parts of the triad and say what each one holds
• Use the Question Test to decide where a new piece of knowledge belongs

Start with the folder

Someone has handed you a directory. Inside it are more directories, and inside those are text files. No app, no database, no login screen. It looks like the least impressive thing you have ever been given.

Here is the one-sentence version of what it actually is:

An aDNA graph is a folder of plain text that an AI assistant reads as its memory before it helps you.

That is the whole idea. When you open a conversation with an assistant in this folder, it reads the files first, and then it already knows what your project is, how your team does things, and who decides what. You do not have to explain yourself again every morning.

The files are ordinary Markdown — the same thing a README is. You can read every one of them with nothing but a text editor. Nothing is compiled, nothing is hidden, and if the tooling vanished tomorrow you would still have everything, because the knowledge was never inside the tool.

Why a folder and not an app

Three reasons, and they are worth understanding rather than taking on faith.

You can read it. A system that stores your team’s knowledge somewhere you cannot inspect is a system you have to trust. Text in a folder is knowledge you can check. Open a file, disagree with it, fix the sentence.

Your version control already handles it. Text files diff, review, and revert. The history of how your understanding changed is the same history as your code — same tools, same review, no separate product to buy.

Assistants are good at text. This is the practical part. An AI assistant reads Markdown natively and well. Structuring your knowledge as text is not a compromise to make the machine happy; it is the format both of you are best at.

The triad

Open the folder and you will find three directories that show up in every graph:

• what/ — what we know. Facts, decisions, specifications, reference material. Things that are true about your project.
• how/ — how we do things. Procedures, workflows, the record of work in progress. Things you follow or perform.
• who/ — who is involved. People, roles, identity, and the messages passing between separate graphs.

That is it. Three drawers. Nearly everything you will ever add belongs cleanly in one of them, and the reason the split works is that it matches the three kinds of question people actually ask.

The Question Test

When you have a new piece of knowledge and you are not sure where to put it, do not guess. Turn it into a question and see which one it sounds like:

“Our staging environment runs on the same database version as production” answers what do we know. It is a fact. It goes in what/.

“Deploy by merging to the main branch, then watching the health dashboard for ten minutes” answers how do we do it. It is a procedure. It goes in how/.

“Priya reviews anything that touches authentication” answers who is involved. It goes in who/.

The test takes about two seconds and it is right the overwhelming majority of the time. When it is genuinely ambiguous, that is usually a sign the note is doing two jobs and wants to be two notes.

What your agent does with this

Here is the half that makes the folder more than tidy filing.

When you ask your assistant to do something, it does not read the entire folder — that would be slow and expensive, and most of it would be irrelevant. It reads the governing files first, works out which part of the graph your request touches, and then loads only that part.

So the triad is not decoration. It is how the assistant narrows down. A question about your release process sends it to how/, and it never has to wade through what/ to find out. A well-sorted graph makes your assistant faster and more accurate, and a folder where everything is dumped in one place makes it slower and vaguer. The Question Test is the small daily habit that keeps it sorted.

Try it

Think of one thing you know about your current project that nobody has written down — a quirk, a rule, a person to ask. Say it out loud as a question. Which drawer does it want?

Then do the check below.