# The question pre-flight checklist

Seven checks the agent runs before any question may reach the operator. Only when all seven come up empty may the question be asked.

From the [Templates & checklists](../index.md#templates) section of [The Muse Field Guide](../index.md).

## How to use it

Print it, pin it, or encode it in your agent's standing files. The detail will differ in your household; the rule underneath transfers: the agent exhausts its own records before it spends your attention, and "I could not find it" has to mean it looked everywhere, not somewhere.

## The checklist

- [ ] Memory searched, with several phrasings.
- [ ] Direct relationship records checked.
- [ ] Duplicate or stub identities ruled out.
- [ ] The last seven days of workup files read.
- [ ] The people pages checked.
- [ ] Every comms channel searched.
- [ ] For photo questions: does the operator appear in the photos at all?

## Where this came from

Most candidate questions die in the pre-flight. In the household's verification chat the checklist is exercised constantly, and the questions that survive it are the ones that genuinely need the human.

Deep dive: [Steal this](../deep-dives/steal-this.md)

Related resources: [Run a pre-flight before asking](preflight-before-asking.md), [Ask only for ground truth](ask-only-ground-truth.md), [One question, at the end](one-question-at-a-time.md)

Canonical page: https://www.niclydon.io/muse/items/question-preflight-checklist.html