# How we run our backlog and our fundraise on Known

Unknown is two founders and a handful of agents. We don't use an issue tracker or a CRM. Our backlog, our fundraise and our partner conversations are records in Known, written by us and by the agents we work with: Claude Code and ChatGPT, over MCP. This note is what that looks like after two months, including what went wrong.

## What's in it

As of 27 October 2026:

| Table | Records |
|---|---|
| Issues | 62 |
| Contacts | 164 |
| Organizations | 136 |
| Interactions (calls, meetings, messages) | 136 |
| Relationship flow (where each conversation stands) | 85 |
| Tasks | 135 |

Both founders and our agents write to all of them.

People and organizations live once, in one wiki. The fundraise, outreach and product each have their own wiki and link to them.

## What a day looks like

- **After a call,** one of us tells ChatGPT what happened, often by voice on the way out. It writes the interaction, links the people and the company, and updates where the conversation stands and what's next.
- **While coding,** Claude Code files the bugs it finds, moves its issue to done when it ships, and adds the commit and the deploy.

Nobody pastes context into an agent. The agent reads the records, and follows the links from an issue to the customer or from a contact to the last meeting.

## What went wrong

Agents write what the tables let them. When we looked closely, we found records that were wrong in ways a person would rarely get wrong:

- **A guessed attendee.** A lunch with three people from one company was recorded under a fourth person, who may not have been there. The table allowed one person per meeting, and the agent had to pick someone.
- **Facts in the wrong place.** A contact's role and LinkedIn were written into a meeting, not onto the contact.
- **A profile filed as an event.** Someone's conference directory entry became an "interaction" of type "other".
- **The same person twice,** under two spellings.
- **A link to nobody.** An organization listed a contact that didn't exist.
- **Hedging everywhere.** "Not independently verified" in every field of some records.

## What fixed it

Not reminders. Rules the tables enforce or state:

1. **Links instead of ids.** Every reference to another record is a link in a field named for what it is: `people`, `organizations`, `round`. The schema rejects anything else, so an agent can't type a name where a link belongs.
2. **Many people per meeting,** confirmed ones only. An uncertain attendee is named in the notes, not linked.
3. **A description on every field.** Agents read them before writing; "Facts about the person go on their contact" stops the misplaced role.
4. **Rules on every table's page:** what one record is and isn't, what to check first (search for the person; the next free key), and what to update after (the relationship's last touch and next step).
5. **Unknown is null.** A date known only to the month is stored as the month.

We'll report how it holds up. The lesson so far for any team putting agents to work on their records: the schema and the page are the instructions. Write them as if the reader will follow them literally, because it will.

## Related

- [Work your agents can see](https://known.info/docs/guides/problems/work-with-context)
- [Set up issue tracking in Known](https://known.info/docs/guides/how-to/issue-tracking)
- [Set up a CRM in Known](https://known.info/docs/guides/how-to/crm)