When two documents contradict each other: who is right?

The key points at a glance

• Letting the newest statement win is not enough in a team: a passing mail then overrides what the person responsible wrote.
• Scibly weighs where a statement comes from, who stands behind it and how old it is.
• When that is not clear, both sides are contested, and Scibly asks someone who knows the subject and was part of neither statement.
• Agents and the app show both sides with person, date and source, but only to those who may open both sources.

How does Scibly decide which statement holds?

Whoever wrote last is not automatically right. Scibly weighs where a statement comes from and who stands behind it. When that is clear, one side holds and the other stays traceable beside it. When it is not, Scibly shows both sides as contested, with person, date and source, and asks someone who should know.

Why not just take the newest statement?

That is how Zep, a provider of memory for AI agents, does it with its graph Graphiti: new information takes priority there (Rasmussen et al., 2025). For the memory of a single user that often fits: someone who says something different today than yesterday has usually learned something.

In a team, many people speak. Scibly, too, first let the later statement win. So a trainee's passing mail overrode what the system's owner had written a week before, and nobody saw that there had been a disagreement at all.

Whoever writes last is not right by default. Whoever is responsible is not right forever either.

What counts in Scibly?

• Where the statement comes from. What someone on the team writes weighs more than an automated notification or a newsletter.
• Who stands behind it. The person responsible for a project or system weighs more than someone who was there once. Several people weigh more than one.
• How old it is. Even the responsible person's word does not hold forever. The older it is, the more easily a new statement replaces it.

How is a disagreement settled?

By a later statement with enough backing, by a person marking one side as wrong, or by a question: Scibly asks someone who knows the subject and was part of neither statement. They answer with one click on the side that holds.

Until then, an agent asking Scibly gets both sides and the note that they contradict each other. It should name both and say whom you can ask. Only those who may open both sources see this; so a contradiction never gives away what is in a document you may not see.

How leaders see what was decided and where things are stuck: Scibly for leadership.