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Recipe: organising the team's shared memory without duplicating it
A good shared memory rests on four moves, gathering, spotting duplicates even when the wording differs, linking what belongs together, and finding things quickly through a light contents page rather than by searching the whole folder every time.
This recipe comes from the author's own method, it does not rest on any dated product documentation. A team that shares its documents with Cowork quickly builds up dozens of files that repeat the same information in different forms. Shared memory does not improve by adding files, it improves when it links what already exists and flags what is repeated.
Spotting a duplicate that does not look like one
An exact duplicate turns up with a word search. A duplicate worth spotting is different: two sets of meeting minutes can describe the same decision in completely different wording, one speaking of a revised budget, the other of a new financial envelope. Ask Cowork to read several documents and compare their content rather than their titles. One possible output looks like this:
Comparaison de trois fichiers.
1. compte-rendu-mars.docx et notes-reunion-budget.docx décrivent la même décision, le budget matériel passe de 4000 à 5200 euros.
2. guide-accueil.docx ne recoupe aucun des deux autres fichiers.This result covers the three files submitted, not the whole shared folder. Extending the comparison to other documents means rerunning it on those other documents.
Linking rather than merging
Merging two documents that partly overlap makes useful nuances disappear. Instead ask Cowork to note, at the top of each file concerned, a link to the related document and the nature of the overlap. Memory stays spread across several files, but each one knows where to look. This annotation touches several of the team's files at once, so keep the Manual mode described for approval levels on this operation, or have the annotation run on a copy of the folder rather than on the originals.
A short contents page rather than a folder that keeps growing
A shared folder becomes hard to browse well before it becomes genuinely large, because finding a document means remembering its exact title. A one page contents list, kept up to date with every addition, with one line of description and its link for each document, makes the folder usable without browsing it in full. The recipe for drafting in separate steps applies well to this contents list, one step to list, one step to check that every line stays short.
Checking before trusting
A comparison between two documents produced by Cowork remains a reading, not absolute proof. Reopen the two passages cited before treating the overlap as settled, especially when the decision compares figures.
Four layers of a well kept shared memory
A cooperative's quality manager asks Cowork to compare three sets of meeting minutes saved under different titles. Cowork reports that two of them describe the same budget decision in different words.
Write one sentence stating what this situation establishes, and one sentence stating what it does not establish.
What this establishes: The result establishes that Cowork can spot that two documents cover the same decision even when their wording differs, for the three sets of minutes submitted for comparison.
What this does not establish: It does not establish that Cowork spots every duplicate in the team's shared folder, since only three documents were compared.
The three most common miscalibrations
- Trop large Cowork also spots duplicates across the whole team shared folder, beyond the three sets of minutes compared.
- Trop étroit This result proves nothing at all, since the comparison covered only meeting minutes and no other type of document.
- À côté This result shows that the budget decision made during the meeting was the right one, since two sets of minutes confirm it.
- A duplicate worth spotting compares the content of several documents, not just their titles or file names.
- The result of a comparison covers the documents actually submitted, it does not automatically extend to the rest of the shared folder.
- Linking two related documents with a simple note at the top of the file preserves nuances that a merge would make disappear.
- A one page contents list kept up to date makes a folder usable without having to browse it in full on every search.
Open your team's shared folder, pick two documents you suspect of repeating the same information, and ask Cowork to compare their content sentence by sentence to confirm whether they say the same thing.