The Five-Box AI System
A filing system for keeping AI instructions, repeatable processes, tools, and app connections from blending into one unfindable mess.
Where Everything Lives
1. Rulebook
Your standing instructions: who you are, how you work, voice rules, project standards, and default behavior.
2. Specialists
Skills or agents that handle a kind of job: writing in your voice, researching, designing, coding, auditing.
3. Recipes
Plain-English process documents: when this happens, do these steps, in this order, with these checks.
4. Executions
Small mechanical tools that do one repeatable task reliably: pull a transcript, resize files, generate a report.
5. Connections
Live bridges into other apps and services, usually through connectors or MCP servers.
The Point
Rules tell the system how to behave. Specialists do the thinking. Recipes coordinate. Executions do the boring parts. Connections reach outside the workspace.
Put Every New Thing in One Place
- If it is a standing preference or standard, it belongs in the rulebook.
- If it is a role you talk to, make it a skill or agent.
- If it is a step-by-step process, save it as a recipe.
- If it is a narrow repeatable action, make or reuse an execution.
- If it reaches another app, document it as a connection.
Practical rule: keep specialists smart, tools simple, and recipes responsible for the handoff. That makes problems easier to find later.
Original Source
Adapted from Cindy Zhu's guide: The 5-box system that organizes your whole AI setup.