# Sources and claim boundaries

Research reviewed 2026-10-19. The durable source record below separates company
statements, firsthand practitioner guidance, and this skill's recommendations.
The supplied independent research packs were reviewed on that date; “pack” means
the implementing agent relied on that supplied verification, not a separate fetch.
Public web text is not a license to redistribute corporate templates or examples.
All bundled scaffolds and examples are original.

## Amazon and Working Backwards

| Source and provenance | Retained claim and use | Limits |
|---|---|---|
| [Andy Jassy, 2024 shareholder letter](https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/amazon-ceo-andy-jassy-2024-letter-to-shareholders), company primary source; pack and direct retrieval | Describes narrative memos capped at six pages; supports reasoning in connected prose | A ceiling, not a mandatory length, word count, font, or universal heading sequence |
| [Jeff Bezos, 2017 shareholder letter](https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/company-news/2017-letter-to-shareholders), company primary source; pack | Silent reading at meeting start, revision, peer feedback; excellent memos resist mechanical specification | Do not turn the account into a universal timetable or formula for quality |
| [AWS, How to write a narrative](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/startups/startup-advice-how-to-write-a-narrative/), Richard Howard, 2019 company-hosted practitioner guide; directly retrieved | Purpose/background, plans and tracking, risks/dependencies; writing clarifies thinking and preserves reasoning for later review | Startup-oriented guidance; its headings and 15-minute meeting account are not universal rules. Its advice to ground claims in facts is implemented here by distinguishing evidence from explicit forecasts and assumptions |
| [AWS, Product management at Amazon](https://aws.amazon.com/executive-insights/content/product-management-at-amazon/), company primary source; pack | Describes the single-page future press release | The release is one component of a PR/FAQ, not the whole document |
| [Bryar/Carr, Amazon-hosted Working Backwards excerpt](https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/workplace/an-insider-look-at-amazons-culture-and-processes), 2021 firsthand book excerpt; pack and direct discovery | Work backwards from a defined customer experience to clarify what to build | Firsthand account; do not copy its examples or treat all narratives as PR/FAQs |
| [Bryar/Carr, Narratives & Decision Making](https://workingbackwards.com/concepts/narratives-decision-making/), firsthand practitioner guidance; pack and direct retrieval | Multiple narrative applications; suggests up to six body pages and 15–20 minutes reading for an hour, up to three and 7–10 minutes for half an hour | Attribute the timing and length advice to the practitioners; local constraints may differ |
| [Bryar/Carr, Working Backwards PR/FAQ](https://workingbackwards.com/resources/working-backwards-pr-faq/), firsthand practitioner guide; pack | Customer and internal questions have different jobs; internal feasibility and economics matter | Future claims and imagined quotes are hypotheses, not customer testimony |
| [AWS, Amazon's Two Pizza Teams](https://aws.amazon.com/executive-insights/content/amazon-two-pizza-team/), company primary source; directly retrieved | Describes narratives across product proposals, business reviews, readiness reviews, and correction-of-errors learning | Supports taxonomy breadth; does not make one strategy template suitable for every artifact |

## Independently documented written cultures

These sources establish their own practices. No Amazon-adoption claim is inferred.
All were supplied in an independently verified research pack reviewed 2026-10-19.

| Source | Retained mechanism | Limits and exclusions |
|---|---|---|
| [GitLab Architecture Design Workflow](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/architecture/workflow/), company handbook, updated 2026-02-07 | Living design documents can begin with a paragraph; DRI, review roles, advance deadlines; ADR context and consequences | No fixed page cap. Linked raw template was not successfully fetched, so no claims about its exact text or reproduction |
| [Basecamp Shape Up: Write the Pitch](https://basecamp.com/shapeup/1.5-chapter-06) and [Place Your Bets](https://basecamp.com/shapeup/2.2-chapter-08), creators' book | Problem, appetite, solution, rabbit holes, no-gos; async reading/comments before betting | Appetite concerns time investment; six-week delivery cycles do not set document length. Sketches are compatible |
| [Coinbase: How we make decisions](https://www.coinbase.com/blog/how-we-make-decisions-at-coinbase), Emilie Choi, 2021-10-11, company primary source | Routine Problem/Proposed Solution documents average a page and target under fifteen minutes drafting; consequential choices use stronger decision roles and RAPID | Historical account, not a current universal rule. Credits Mochary and LinkedIn/Weiner; linked Google Docs templates were not verified |
| [Automattic trial guidance](https://automattic.com/what-to-expect-during-a-trial/) and [P2 decision guide](https://p2guides.wordpress.com/p2-decision-making/how-to-make-decisions-in-p2/), company and firsthand sources | Durable P2 records; shared facts/assumptions, threaded tradeoffs, escalation and outcomes | P2 guide explicitly allows different decision modes; no universal memo template is established |
| [Automattic Special Projects briefs](https://specialprojects.automattic.com/project-handbook/project-briefs/), team primary source | Concise goals, approach, timing, stakeholders, decisions and questions | Applies to this specialty team's partner briefs, not a company-wide format or whole-document page cap |
| [Netflix culture](https://www.jobs.netflix.com/culture) and [June 2024 culture PDF](https://jobs.netflix.com/netflix-culture.pdf), company primary sources | Commentable context, informed captain, solicited dissent, accountable decision and reflection | No verified universal operational memo headings, six-page cap, or silent-reading rule |

## Synthesis and exclusions

The short-brief scaffold, 20-minute agenda example, readability tests, and routing
defaults are this skill's recommendations. They combine decision-writing judgment
with the source mechanisms; they are not sourced corporate templates. The worked
examples are invented and establish no factual claim about customer behavior.

Secondary search results were excluded from corporate-practice claims in favor of
company sources and firsthand accounts. No leaked internal memo, private company
material, personal interview notes, or proprietary example was used. Exact corporate
templates that could not be fetched were not reconstructed from guesswork.

No authenticated crawler was used. The unavailable crawler route was excluded and
was not retried; public sources and supplied research were sufficient for scope.

Open questions: actual receiving-team layout and governance must be supplied or
explicitly assumed for each use. Company practices can evolve; recheck the relevant
primary source when current policy, rather than a described historical mechanism,
is material. This skill does not claim a universal or exhaustive Amazon memo taxonomy.