Two notes disagree about the rent you were quoted. Which one wins? Without dates, you are guessing. Without sources, you cannot tell a firsthand record from a rumor you pasted. Without the original audio, you cannot check whether the transcript misheard ‘fifteen’ as ‘fifty’. Provenance is what turns stored text into checkable memory.
A fact without a date cannot be ordered
Most real questions about your history are questions of sequence: what did I decide last, which quote came after the inspection, had I already been warned? Dates are what let a newer note supersede an older one. A system that displays content without chronology invites you to act on superseded information.
The source tells you how much to trust it
A thing you said in a voice memo, a screenshot of someone else’s claim, a forwarded link—these carry very different weight, and the difference is the source. Knowing that a note came from your own dictation versus a shared article changes what ‘my notes say X’ actually means.
Originals let you audit the machine
Transcription mishears names and numbers. Text extraction misreads photos. These errors are rare but land precisely on the details that matter most—figures, dates, medications. The original recording or image is your audit trail.
- Keep the original attached to every derived text, permanently.
- Mark uncertain transcription instead of guessing silently.
- Before acting on a number, a name, or a dosage—replay the source.
Answers inherit these requirements
When an assistant answers from your notes, the same three standards apply: the answer should show which notes it used, from when, and let you open each one. An answer that cannot show its provenance is an opinion about your memory, not a report of it.
Store every memory with its birth certificate: a date, a source, and the untouched original. Verification you cannot do is trust you should not give.