How to Feed Sera: A Complete Guide

How to Feed Sera: A Complete Guide

Feeding Sera is simple by design. Everything you want remembered goes to your capture inbox (for example capture@yourorg.com). Master that one habit and you have mastered the system.

If you talk to Sera through the Claude connector, you have two extra ways in, and choosing the right one matters more than anything else on this page. That is the next section.

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Save a document, or pull records out of it?

These are two different requests, and asking for the wrong one is the single most common way people end up with a cluttered workspace.

"Save this document." Sera keeps it whole, as one record in your Knowledge Base, linked back to the original. Use this for a blueprint, a policy, a structure, a plan, or anything you will want to refer back to later as a single thing. Say "save this", "remember this", or "this is the current version of X".

"Pull the tasks out of this." Sera reads the content and creates separate records for every task, decision, risk, and person she finds. Use this for meeting notes and email threads, where the value is in the individual commitments rather than the document itself. Say "extract this" or "pull the tasks and decisions out of this".

A long document asked the wrong way becomes forty loose records nobody asked for. A meeting note asked the wrong way becomes one page that hides the commitments inside it.

Two things worth knowing. When you save a document, Sera links your original rather than copying the text, so the living version stays the single source of truth and no second copy drifts away from it. And if you tell her who it is from ("save this, it is from me"), your name is recorded on the record. That matters, and the next section explains why.

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Saving something does not make it approved

This is the most important idea in the whole system, and it is easy to miss.

Everything Sera writes is a draft or a candidate, waiting for a person. Filing a document does not make its contents true, agreed, or organizational policy. Approval is something a human does, deliberately, later.

Every record carries two fields that answer the question "can I trust this?":

• Asserted By. Who put this here. Either a person's name, or the plain words "Sera (automated extraction) - not asserted by a person".
• Provenance Class. What kind of claim it is: a Recorded Fact, a Proposed Idea, an Approved Decision, an Unconfirmed Claim, and so on.

An Approved Decision requires evidence that a person approved it. Nothing automated can produce one.

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Cleaning up: the one filter that does the work

If your workspace has filled with material nobody reviewed, you do not have to read all of it.

Open any table in Notion and filter on Asserted By. Everything reading "Sera (automated extraction) - not asserted by a person" is material no person ever stood behind. Select what you do not want and archive it, in bulk, in Notion's own interface.

Filter the same field the other way to see only what a named person put forward. That list is usually much shorter, and it is the part of your memory that carries real weight.

Archiving in Notion is reversible, so this is safe to do in large batches.

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The three ways to send

You can get content to the capture inbox however suits the moment:

• Forward an email, a meeting notification, or a document to the inbox.
• CC or BCC the inbox on a message you are already sending.
• Send directly to the inbox, attaching whatever you want captured.

There is no app to open and no form to fill in. If it can reach the inbox, Sera can work with it.

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How each file type is handled

Sera adapts to what you send. Here is how the common formats are processed:

• PDF — uploaded to Drive, converted to a Doc, then read as text.
• DOCX — extracted locally. This is the most reliable path and needs no Drive round-trip, so Word documents are an excellent format to send.
• Images — described using Claude Vision, so a photographed whiteboard or a screenshot becomes readable text.
• Plain text and Markdown (txt, md) — read directly, the simplest path of all.
• Other Office formats — converted through Drive. If a conversion fails, Sera creates a stub record so the item is visible and nothing is ever silently dropped.

That last point matters: even in the rare failure case, you get a breadcrumb rather than silence.

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How Sera decides what to do with it

Sera routes each message based on its shape:

• Short cover note plus a substantial attachment — if the email body is brief (under roughly 200 characters) and the real content is in an attached document, Sera treats the attachment as reference material and files it as a Knowledge Base Draft.
• Rich email body — if the message body itself carries substance, Sera runs full entity extraction, pulling out tasks, decisions, risks, and the rest.

Knowing this lets you steer the outcome. Want a document filed as reference? Attach it with a one-line note. Want the content mined for decisions and tasks? Put the substance in the body.

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Forwarding whole threads

When you forward an entire email thread, Sera reads the full history, not just the top message. This is powerful for capturing the arc of a negotiation or a decision that unfolded over many replies.

One tip: add a single line of context at the very top before you forward, such as "Forwarding our vendor decision thread; the final call is in the last message." That one sentence dramatically improves what Sera understands.

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What Sera deliberately ignores

Sera is careful about what she does not treat as memory:

• Calendar invites — messages that are invitations, acceptances, or declines are operational noise, never meeting content. They are ignored.
• Off-domain senders — mail from outside your organization is not processed on its own unless someone inside forwards it in.
• Video — a raw recording gets an access check so it is reachable, but the video itself is not transcribed by Sera. Send the transcript or notes for the actual content.

These exclusions keep your memory clean and prevent it from filling up with scheduling chatter.

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Correcting a record

If Sera gets something wrong, you do not file a ticket or wrestle with the AI. You simply edit the Notion page directly. Fix the wording, adjust an owner, correct a date, whatever is needed. Because Sera deduplicates on re-runs, editing the record by hand is safe: the same source will not overwrite your correction with a fresh duplicate. Human judgment always has the final word.

There is a second benefit worth knowing. When the correction happens in the review flow, an edit made before you click Approve or a rejection with a reason, it is captured as a signal. Once the same correction has been made consistently, Sera stops making that mistake in this organization. Everything she has learned that way is listed at /transparency, where an admin can forget any of it in one click.

Key points

Two different requests, and choosing wrong is the most common cause of a cluttered workspace: "save this document" keeps it whole as one Knowledge Base record linked to the original, for blueprints, policies and plans; "pull the tasks out of this" creates separate records for every task, decision, risk and person, for meeting notes and threads. Saving links the original rather than copying it, so no second copy drifts. Naming who it is from records them in Asserted By. Filing is never approval: everything Sera writes is a draft awaiting a person, and an Approved Decision requires evidence a human approved it, which nothing automated can produce. To clean up, filter Asserted By in Notion: everything reading "Sera (automated extraction) - not asserted by a person" is material nobody stood behind, and can be archived in bulk reversibly; filter the other way to see only what a named person put forward. The capture inbox remains the main input: forward, CC, BCC, or send directly. File handling: PDF goes through Drive and Docs to text, DOCX is extracted locally (most reliable, no Drive needed), images get a Claude Vision description, txt and md are read directly, and other Office formats are converted via Drive with a stub record created on failure so nothing is silently dropped. Routing: a short cover body under about 200 characters plus a substantial attachment becomes a KB Draft, while a rich email body triggers full entity extraction. Forwarding a whole thread reads the full history; add a one-line context note at the top. Sera ignores calendar invites, off-domain senders unless forwarded, and video beyond an access check. To correct a record, edit the Notion page directly; re-runs deduplicate.