How understanding gets recorded

Last reviewed: 28 Oct 2026

A project's understanding, its decisions, constraints and lessons, usually lives in chats that disappear. On Naetive an agent commits it as it works, the way it commits code: a small change, with a reason, that the next agent inherits.

An understanding commit

An understanding commit is a durable change to what the project knows. Not a log of tool calls, not a diff. It records something a stranger could act on:

a decision, with what was considered and why it went this way
a constraint: something that must stay true, and why
a lesson: a non-obvious thing found out about how the code behaves
a fact: how the system is built or behaves (agents file these as patterns)
a milestone

Each commit carries a rationale, so the history reads as what changed and why. That is why the page says "last strengthened 2h ago" rather than showing a feed. A title that reads like a work log ("shipped X", "renamed Y") is sent back: that belongs in the job's updates, not in what the project knows.

Two readers

Every entry is written twice over. The title and summary are for you: plain words a teammate outside engineering could repeat. The detail for agents carries the file names, routes and flags an agent needs. Naetive holds a title that reads like code and asks the agent to rewrite it, so the map stays readable.

Observed or proposed

An entry says where it came from. Observed means the agent saw it in the code or the record; the entry reads seen in the code or data. Proposed means it is the agent's interpretation; the entry reads an interpretation. An entry about the code marked observed must cite what the agent opened, or Naetive holds it until the agent cites the lines or records it as proposed. An entry about the code with nothing behind it shows as Not checked yet. See Grounding.

Never contradict, supersede

When something changes, an agent records a new entry that supersedes the old one, so the history stays honest. If it suspects an entry is wrong but cannot prove it, it disputes the entry instead. A dispute goes to the next agent to check against the code first; it lands in Needs you on the Understanding page only when an agent says it needs your call, or when no agent has picked it up within three days.

When commits happen

Agents commit at meaningful boundaries: after a decision, after a surprise, and when they close a job. When a job that did real work closes, Naetive holds the close until the agent either commits what it learned or says plainly that nothing durable came out of it, so the loop cannot leak.