The Context Debt Map

content/demos/context-debt-map.json

{
  "demo_id": "context-debt-map",
  "demo_type": "interactive_demonstration",
  "title": "The Context Debt Map",
  "company_fictional": "Halloway Partners",
  "setup_line": "Halloway Partners wants to let an AI assistant answer staff HR and facilities questions. Before touching the assistant, we audited what it would actually be working from.",
  "debt_categories": [
    "Missing",
    "Contradictory",
    "Outdated",
    "Unowned",
    "Difficult to retrieve",
    "Unsafe to automate"
  ],
  "fragments": [
    {
      "id": "f01",
      "source_type": "pdf",
      "source_label": "Staff Handbook, 2019 edition",
      "fragment_text": "Remote work is permitted up to 2 days per week, subject to line manager approval logged via the HR portal.",
      "tags": [
        "Outdated"
      ],
      "why_dangerous": "An assistant citing this would tell staff a policy that hasn't been true since 2021, without knowing it's wrong."
    },
    {
      "id": "f02",
      "source_type": "slack",
      "source_label": "Slack DM, Ops Director to J. Okafor, March 2025",
      "fragment_text": "Just work from home full-time while your mum's recovering, don't worry about logging it through the portal.",
      "tags": [
        "Unowned",
        "Difficult to retrieve"
      ],
      "why_dangerous": "This exception exists nowhere an assistant could find it, and no one owns updating it if the circumstance changes."
    },
    {
      "id": "f03",
      "source_type": "pdf",
      "source_label": "Expense Policy, v3",
      "fragment_text": "Expense claims exceeding \u00a3200 require director sign-off before reimbursement.",
      "tags": [
        "Contradictory"
      ],
      "why_dangerous": "This directly conflicts with the intranet expense page. An assistant fed both would have no way to know which one governs."
    },
    {
      "id": "f04",
      "source_type": "intranet",
      "source_label": "Finance intranet page (unlinked from main site nav)",
      "fragment_text": "Any expense claim over \u00a3150 must be signed off by a director before it can be processed.",
      "tags": [
        "Contradictory",
        "Difficult to retrieve"
      ],
      "why_dangerous": "The \u00a3150 figure was never reconciled with the \u00a3200 figure in the official policy doc, and this page isn't linked from anywhere staff would normally look."
    },
    {
      "id": "f05",
      "source_type": "tribal",
      "source_label": "Office manager, verbal only",
      "fragment_text": "Meeting rooms 3 and 5 have broken AV, so I just route bookings around them manually and never got round to marking them as unavailable in the system.",
      "tags": [
        "Missing",
        "Unowned"
      ],
      "why_dangerous": "The booking system itself says these rooms are free. An assistant would confidently recommend rooms that don't actually work."
    },
    {
      "id": "f06",
      "source_type": "macro",
      "source_label": "IT Helpdesk canned reply, last edited 2022",
      "fragment_text": "For a new laptop request, please contact our supplier Brindlow Tech on the number below to arrange collection.",
      "tags": [
        "Outdated",
        "Unsafe to automate"
      ],
      "why_dangerous": "Halloway Partners dropped Brindlow Tech eighteen months ago. An assistant using this macro would send staff to a supplier that no longer has a contract with the company, confidently, and with a phone number that may now ring somewhere else entirely."
    },
    {
      "id": "f07",
      "source_type": "checklist",
      "source_label": "HR Onboarding Checklist, step 14",
      "fragment_text": "Confirm right-to-work documents have been received and verified.",
      "tags": [
        "Unowned"
      ],
      "why_dangerous": "Three teams each assume another team owns this step. An assistant asked \"has this been done?\" would have no reliable source to check against."
    },
    {
      "id": "f08",
      "source_type": "email",
      "source_label": "Email thread, buried in a manager's inbox, 2024",
      "fragment_text": "Approved: happy for you to move to a 4-day week from next month as a one-off arrangement given the client account you're running.",
      "tags": [
        "Missing",
        "Difficult to retrieve"
      ],
      "why_dangerous": "This approved exception was never entered into any HR system. An assistant checking this employee's contracted hours would get the wrong answer."
    },
    {
      "id": "f09",
      "source_type": "laminated",
      "source_label": "Laminated sign, pinned to a wall in the Leeds office only",
      "fragment_text": "Fire warden rota and evacuation assembly point: see attached rota for this floor.",
      "tags": [
        "Difficult to retrieve",
        "Unsafe to automate"
      ],
      "why_dangerous": "This safety-critical information exists in exactly one physical location. An assistant asked about fire procedure at any other office, or by anyone not standing in front of that wall, has nothing to draw on, and safety information is the worst place for a model to improvise."
    },
    {
      "id": "f10",
      "source_type": "tribal",
      "source_label": "Office manager, verbal only",
      "fragment_text": "We don't use Farrow Office Supplies anymore. There was a dispute over a delivery a couple of years back and we quietly moved everyone to a different vendor.",
      "tags": [
        "Missing",
        "Unowned"
      ],
      "why_dangerous": "Nothing written down says why this supplier is off-limits. An assistant helping with procurement could reintroduce a vendor the business deliberately walked away from."
    },
    {
      "id": "f11",
      "source_type": "ai_instruction",
      "source_label": "Existing chatbot instruction, already live",
      "fragment_text": "If asked about parental leave, refer the employee to the 2019 staff handbook, section 4.",
      "tags": [
        "Outdated",
        "Unsafe to automate"
      ],
      "why_dangerous": "This isn't a gap waiting to cause a problem: it's a live instruction actively pointing staff at policy that's several policy revisions out of date, with full confidence and no caveat."
    },
    {
      "id": "f12",
      "source_type": "disagreement",
      "source_label": "Two HR staff, disagreeing when asked directly",
      "fragment_text": "One says probation is three months. The other says six. Both have made verbal offers to candidates using their own number.",
      "tags": [
        "Contradictory",
        "Unsafe to automate"
      ],
      "why_dangerous": "Both versions are held with equal confidence by people who are supposed to be the authority. An assistant would have to pick one, with no way to know which is currently correct."
    }
  ],
  "prioritised_output": {
    "fix_before_automating": [
      "f06",
      "f09",
      "f11",
      "f12"
    ],
    "fix_soon": [
      "f01",
      "f03",
      "f04"
    ],
    "fine_to_leave_for_now": [
      "f02",
      "f05",
      "f07",
      "f08",
      "f10"
    ]
  },
  "closing_line": "This is what a context audit finds before a single AI system gets built on top of it, and it's the deliverable behind the Context & Opportunity Audit service.",
  "card_copy": {
    "headline": "The knowledge nobody wrote down",
    "body": "Twelve scattered sources. Six kinds of context debt. See what an audit actually finds before a single AI system gets built on top of it."
  }
}