Best Practices
How to get the most out of Stateful.
Connect high-signal sources first
Not all sources are equally useful. Prioritize the ones where you spend decision-making time:
- Email (Gmail or Outlook) is usually the richest single source — it captures your relationships, commitments, and priorities.
- GitHub or GitLab gives Stateful a precise picture of your technical work.
- Linear or Todoist captures what you're actively working on.
Add health and lifestyle sources (Oura, Strava) once the work layer is established.
Capture constraints, not just preferences
Preferences are things you usually want. Constraints are things you always need — and the distinction matters for agents:
- "I prefer TypeScript" → a preference; an agent may use something else.
- "Never use
anyin TypeScript — it's a project rule" → a constraint; the agent should follow it every time.
The easiest way to capture either is to tell the assistant: "Never generate SQL without parameterized queries." Stateful records it as a typed fact — a constraint — and surfaces it to future AIs. Facts you state directly are added to your profile right away; when you later correct something Stateful already believed, that change waits in your inbox so you can see what's being overwritten before it lands.
Correct early, correct explicitly
When an AI gets something wrong about you — wrong employer, wrong stack, wrong preference — correct it immediately and specifically:
"That's wrong. I'm not using React — this project is all SvelteKit."
Stateful captures the correction as a typed fact that overrides the original. Vague corrections ("that's not right") don't produce reliable updates — be specific.
Review your inbox
remember, corrections, and AI-proposed facts all land in your inbox before they touch your wiki. Check it regularly — it's how you keep your profile clean. An approved fact becomes part of your wiki and is surfaced to future AIs; a rejected one is logged so the same claim doesn't keep coming back.
Keep the wiki readable
The wiki is read by AI, but authored by you. Write it the way you'd brief a sharp new colleague:
- Use short, declarative sentences.
- Link people and projects with
[[wikilinks]]— this builds a graph, not just a list.
A cluttered wiki with contradictory facts is worse than a sparse one. Less, but accurate, beats more, but noisy.
Use the Drift Test
The fastest way to check your setup is working: start a fresh conversation with any connected AI and ask "what am I working on right now?" without giving any context.
If it answers accurately — citing your real projects and constraints — Stateful is working. If it's generic or made-up, check that:
- Your MCP connection (or the hook or extension) is wired up.
- The relevant sources are connected and have finished their first sync.
- Your wiki has enough content to answer the question.