Find and resolve conflicting files.
Two files can each contain the right change and the wrong conclusion. Resolve their disagreements by tracing what was intended, rather than choosing whichever was saved last.
Try it now
Copy the prompt into your AI tool of choice, then answer its questions as they come.
Paste it into any AI chat to start. For most people, this is all you need.
Everything on this page in one paste: the prompt plus the full plan, every step and what to check. Use it for longer moves, to plan ahead, to share with a colleague, or if your AI can't open links.
How it goes
What the AI will do
- Compare conflicting files by content and trace the approvals, decisions and version history behind their differences.
- Produce a reconciled file and a clear record of what was kept, changed or left unresolved.
What to have ready
- The conflicting files or the folder/project where they live.
- Version history, approval messages, meeting decisions and related project records help establish which content has authority.
Where you come in
- Decide consequential conflicts the records cannot settle and clarify the intended use or authoritative output when needed.
- Review the reconciled result; missing evidence may leave clearly marked unresolved sections.
What you'll get
A checked reconciled file, a source-linked change record and explicit unresolved conflicts; without enough evidence, a partial reconciliation and the decisions still needed.
You're done when
You have a usable reconciled file and a source-linked change record, with consequential choices resolved or explicitly left open and no authority inferred merely from timestamps.
These are general instructions, not a description of this user's particular AI system, tools, access, or circumstances. Adapt the method to the user's goal and the capabilities you can actually use, while preserving the activity's essential sequence, review points, and intended result. ### Start with the activity and the user's context Read the complete activity and guide the user through it. Use the activity prompt yourself; the user does not need to paste it again. Keep the responsibilities of the user, the AI, and any colleague clear. Begin with what the user has already supplied. Establish the intended result and resolve missing context through focused questions when needed. Work within the activity's stated scope, permissions, required confirmations, and stopping points, including any deliberate order for introducing information. Make progress with the available information and reasonable, clearly identified assumptions where the activity allows them. ### Check the capabilities needed for this work Inspect relevant available tools, connectors, and data. Use small, relevant, non-destructive checks to establish whether necessary access or a capability actually works. Naming a product does not establish access to it. Let this activity determine what needs checking; do not impose a universal preliminary questionnaire or a full system audit. When useful access is missing: - Explain what you cannot reach and how that material would help. - Investigate practical setup, connection, export, or other access alternatives before asking the user to gather material or troubleshoot. - If progress depends on access, request only the specific user action or permission needed to enable it or provide the material another way. Continue useful independent work while awaiting the response. - Offer to walk the user through an export or upload. Welcome files, links, copied text, rough notes, or an interview as supported by your system and the activity, and use the best available route. If the missing access is optional, continue with what is available. ### Ask focused questions and respect the answers Ask questions only when necessary to complete the work well or satisfy the activity's required review points. Build on answers already supplied. Ask one question at a time, or a small group of closely related questions. Wait on work that depends on the answer, and continue useful work that does not. Explain unfamiliar language with examples where helpful. Confirm answers or decisions you supply on the user's behalf before treating them as the user's final answers or decisions. This does not require separate approval of every sourced finding; follow the activity's specific review requirements. ### Keep evidence and independent contributions distinct Distinguish evidence, inference, and missing information. Check your work against the source material. Use independent agents when your system actually supports delegation and independent investigation or review would improve the work: - Give each agent a bounded brief and the context appropriate to its role. - Keep discovery independent until synthesis where the activity requires it. Preserve any requirement for the user or colleagues to contribute before seeing other explanations. - Follow the activity's stated fallback and any required confirmation when independent agents or fresh contexts are unavailable. Preserve reviewer isolation where required; describe shared-context or sequential passes accurately. ### Produce, check, and revise the result Do the substantive investigation and production. Carry the activity through to the most complete, usable result within its scope, rather than ending with a plan or handing the main work back to the user. When missing information does not prevent useful work, proceed with clearly identified assumptions where the activity permits them. Check the result against the activity's completion criteria. At each substantive delivery, state what is complete and any material unfinished work, assumptions, helpful missing information, and remaining uncertainty. Explain how these affect what the user can use, and help the user revise the result. Preserve the activity's stopping point. Do not turn a rehearsal, investigation, or test-design activity into execution that the user has not authorized. Help me find and resolve conflicting files, producing a reconciled file whose content follows the evidence and decisions that actually govern it. Ask focused questions one at a time, and wait before settling consequential conflicts that remain ambiguous. ### 1. Find the candidates and intended result Start with supplied files, folder links or project details. Inspect relevant file, document, version-history, email, chat and transcript tools with small reads to establish actual access. Locate candidate files using their names, subject, authors, project references and links in correspondence. Search related project documents, approval emails, chats, including relevant WhatsApp messages where accessible, and meeting decisions to establish the files' purpose, audience and intended use. Identify whether we are reconciling revisions of one document, competing proposed plans, overlapping spreadsheets or records describing different scopes. Do not merge items just because their names resemble each other. Ask about the intended result or boundary if the record cannot establish it; wait before a transformation whose meaning depends on that choice. Inventory the included candidates with stable IDs or paths, links, titles, authors, document dates, modified timestamps and available version histories. Preserve originals and work toward a separate reconciled output unless an existing instruction clearly specifies another approach. Investigate permitted connection or export routes for missing sources before asking me for the smallest useful action. Explain when missing content or history prevents a definitive resolution. ### 2. Compare actual content by subject Read the files and build a comparison organized around meaningful subjects, clauses, decisions, figures or records. Align corresponding sections even when headings or order differ. For spreadsheets, inspect keys, periods, units and definitions before comparing cells; distinguish a changed value from a changed formula or scope. For documents, separate wording changes from changes in meaning or obligation. For each conflict, record: - The competing content and its exact source location. - Whether it is an addition, omission, direct contradiction, changed definition or merely different wording. - What would change in practice if one version were used. - Any evidence already pointing to a resolution, and what remains unknown. Keep unique, compatible material in view so reconciliation does not discard it merely because another file lacks it. Check appendices, tables, notes and referenced attachments for consequential differences. Label unread or unsupported formats rather than claiming a complete comparison. For a large set, give separate comparison agents bounded file groups or subjects, with actual source material, a common conflict-record format and completion criteria. Track both file and subject coverage. Keep overlapping assignments where necessary to catch cross-file contradictions, then reconcile duplicate findings centrally. Use waves or manageable sequential passes and explicit fresh-session handoffs when agent or context capacity is limited. ### 3. Establish authority for each consequential change Trace substantive differences through available version history, comments, approval messages, project decisions and meeting transcripts. Look for who proposed the change, what they intended, whether someone with relevant authority accepted it, and whether a subsequent decision amended or reversed it. Follow links to the actual approving record rather than relying on a copied claim that something is “final.” Distinguish message date, meeting date, file modification time and effective date. A newer timestamp alone does not make content authoritative. Nor does an older approved file automatically defeat a later explicitly approved amendment. Show the connection between the decision and the affected content. Assign each conflict a supported resolution, a proposed interpretation or an unresolved status, with source references. Different subjects may have different authoritative sources. Do not select one file wholesale when the evidence calls for retaining valid changes from several versions. If two sources govern different periods or audiences, preserve that distinction rather than averaging or collapsing them. ### 4. Resolve choices with me and construct the file Present consequential unresolved conflicts in plain language, explaining what each option would do. Offer two concrete alternatives where they help me decide, with a small example of the resulting wording or values. Recommend a resolution when evidence supports it. Ask one question at a time and wait before incorporating a choice as settled. Continue reconciling independent, unambiguous sections while waiting. If the needed evidence cannot be obtained and I cannot decide yet, agree a partial reconciliation or clearly marked unresolved section. Do not silently choose a version or invent an authoritative answer. Confirm decisions you propose on my behalf before treating them as mine. Create the actual reconciled file in a usable format supported by the environment. Preserve necessary structure, formulas, units, references and unique compatible content. Apply verified and user-resolved changes consistently across repeated mentions and dependent calculations. Keep unresolved material visibly separate from accepted content. Produce a change record linking each substantive resolution to its source or my explicit decision, explaining what was retained, replaced or combined. Include a source list and remaining conflicts. If direct editing is unavailable, create a downloadable or copyable reconciled artifact in a feasible format and explain any formatting or installation step still required. ### 5. Review the artifact and deliver Give an independent reviewer the actual reconciled file, source files, governing evidence and recorded user decisions, without the author's rationale. Ask it to check omissions, unsupported authority claims, unresolved contradictions and whether the output actually implements each settled decision. Review large artifacts in bounded sections with a coverage record, then check consistency across sections. Use fresh-session review if possible or disclose shared-context limits. Inspect the created file in its usable form. Check relevant totals and formulas for spreadsheets, and tables, references and visible structure for documents. Resolve material review findings and recheck affected parts. Deliver the reconciled file, change record and concise explanation of what is settled and what remains open. Do not describe a partial reconciliation as a final authoritative version or replace shared originals without my authorization. These instructions were written in September 2026 using the frontier models available at the time. You may now have better tools or models, or restrictions that make some tasks harder. Your AI should adapt to the tools and access you actually have and find the best available way to help. Everything here is a starting suggestion for you and your AI, not a proven best practice for every setup. Feel free to rewrite any of it to better meet your needs.
View full AI instructions
Find and resolve conflicting files.
What the AI will do
- Compare conflicting files by content and trace the approvals, decisions and version history behind their differences.
- Produce a reconciled file and a clear record of what was kept, changed or left unresolved.
What you can provide
- The conflicting files or the folder/project where they live.
- Version history, approval messages, meeting decisions and related project records help establish which content has authority.
Where you'll take part
- Decide consequential conflicts the records cannot settle and clarify the intended use or authoritative output when needed.
- Review the reconciled result; missing evidence may leave clearly marked unresolved sections.
What you'll get
A checked reconciled file, a source-linked change record and explicit unresolved conflicts; without enough evidence, a partial reconciliation and the decisions still needed.
Activity context
Two files can each contain the right change and the wrong conclusion. Resolve their disagreements by tracing what was intended, rather than choosing whichever was saved last.
For the user
Share the files or point the AI to their location. It will compare their contents and investigate the decisions behind the differences. You will settle conflicts that cannot responsibly be resolved from the record, then review the combined file and change record.
Guidance for the AI
These are general instructions, not a description of this user's particular AI system, tools, access, or circumstances. Adapt the method to the user's goal and the capabilities you can actually use, while preserving the activity's essential sequence, review points, and intended result.
Start with the activity and the user's context
Read the complete activity and guide the user through it. Use the activity prompt yourself; the user does not need to paste it again. Keep the responsibilities of the user, the AI, and any colleague clear.
Begin with what the user has already supplied. Establish the intended result and resolve missing context through focused questions when needed. Work within the activity's stated scope, permissions, required confirmations, and stopping points, including any deliberate order for introducing information. Make progress with the available information and reasonable, clearly identified assumptions where the activity allows them.
Check the capabilities needed for this work
Inspect relevant available tools, connectors, and data. Use small, relevant, non-destructive checks to establish whether necessary access or a capability actually works. Naming a product does not establish access to it. Let this activity determine what needs checking; do not impose a universal preliminary questionnaire or a full system audit.
When useful access is missing:
- Explain what you cannot reach and how that material would help.
- Investigate practical setup, connection, export, or other access alternatives before asking the user to gather material or troubleshoot.
- If progress depends on access, request only the specific user action or permission needed to enable it or provide the material another way. Continue useful independent work while awaiting the response.
- Offer to walk the user through an export or upload. Welcome files, links, copied text, rough notes, or an interview as supported by your system and the activity, and use the best available route. If the missing access is optional, continue with what is available.
Ask focused questions and respect the answers
Ask questions only when necessary to complete the work well or satisfy the activity's required review points. Build on answers already supplied. Ask one question at a time, or a small group of closely related questions. Wait on work that depends on the answer, and continue useful work that does not. Explain unfamiliar language with examples where helpful.
Confirm answers or decisions you supply on the user's behalf before treating them as the user's final answers or decisions. This does not require separate approval of every sourced finding; follow the activity's specific review requirements.
Keep evidence and independent contributions distinct
Distinguish evidence, inference, and missing information. Check your work against the source material.
Use independent agents when your system actually supports delegation and independent investigation or review would improve the work:
- Give each agent a bounded brief and the context appropriate to its role.
- Keep discovery independent until synthesis where the activity requires it. Preserve any requirement for the user or colleagues to contribute before seeing other explanations.
- Follow the activity's stated fallback and any required confirmation when independent agents or fresh contexts are unavailable. Preserve reviewer isolation where required; describe shared-context or sequential passes accurately.
Produce, check, and revise the result
Do the substantive investigation and production. Carry the activity through to the most complete, usable result within its scope, rather than ending with a plan or handing the main work back to the user. When missing information does not prevent useful work, proceed with clearly identified assumptions where the activity permits them.
Check the result against the activity's completion criteria. At each substantive delivery, state what is complete and any material unfinished work, assumptions, helpful missing information, and remaining uncertainty. Explain how these affect what the user can use, and help the user revise the result.
Preserve the activity's stopping point. Do not turn a rehearsal, investigation, or test-design activity into execution that the user has not authorized.
Your AI prompt
Help me find and resolve conflicting files, producing a reconciled file whose content follows the evidence and decisions that actually govern it. Ask focused questions one at a time, and wait before settling consequential conflicts that remain ambiguous.
1. Find the candidates and intended result
Start with supplied files, folder links or project details. Inspect relevant file, document, version-history, email, chat and transcript tools with small reads to establish actual access. Locate candidate files using their names, subject, authors, project references and links in correspondence. Search related project documents, approval emails, chats, including relevant WhatsApp messages where accessible, and meeting decisions to establish the files' purpose, audience and intended use.
Identify whether we are reconciling revisions of one document, competing proposed plans, overlapping spreadsheets or records describing different scopes. Do not merge items just because their names resemble each other. Ask about the intended result or boundary if the record cannot establish it; wait before a transformation whose meaning depends on that choice.
Inventory the included candidates with stable IDs or paths, links, titles, authors, document dates, modified timestamps and available version histories. Preserve originals and work toward a separate reconciled output unless an existing instruction clearly specifies another approach. Investigate permitted connection or export routes for missing sources before asking me for the smallest useful action. Explain when missing content or history prevents a definitive resolution.
2. Compare actual content by subject
Read the files and build a comparison organized around meaningful subjects, clauses, decisions, figures or records. Align corresponding sections even when headings or order differ. For spreadsheets, inspect keys, periods, units and definitions before comparing cells; distinguish a changed value from a changed formula or scope. For documents, separate wording changes from changes in meaning or obligation.
For each conflict, record:
- The competing content and its exact source location.
- Whether it is an addition, omission, direct contradiction, changed definition or merely different wording.
- What would change in practice if one version were used.
- Any evidence already pointing to a resolution, and what remains unknown.
Keep unique, compatible material in view so reconciliation does not discard it merely because another file lacks it. Check appendices, tables, notes and referenced attachments for consequential differences. Label unread or unsupported formats rather than claiming a complete comparison.
For a large set, give separate comparison agents bounded file groups or subjects, with actual source material, a common conflict-record format and completion criteria. Track both file and subject coverage. Keep overlapping assignments where necessary to catch cross-file contradictions, then reconcile duplicate findings centrally. Use waves or manageable sequential passes and explicit fresh-session handoffs when agent or context capacity is limited.
3. Establish authority for each consequential change
Trace substantive differences through available version history, comments, approval messages, project decisions and meeting transcripts. Look for who proposed the change, what they intended, whether someone with relevant authority accepted it, and whether a subsequent decision amended or reversed it. Follow links to the actual approving record rather than relying on a copied claim that something is “final.”
Distinguish message date, meeting date, file modification time and effective date. A newer timestamp alone does not make content authoritative. Nor does an older approved file automatically defeat a later explicitly approved amendment. Show the connection between the decision and the affected content.
Assign each conflict a supported resolution, a proposed interpretation or an unresolved status, with source references. Different subjects may have different authoritative sources. Do not select one file wholesale when the evidence calls for retaining valid changes from several versions. If two sources govern different periods or audiences, preserve that distinction rather than averaging or collapsing them.
4. Resolve choices with me and construct the file
Present consequential unresolved conflicts in plain language, explaining what each option would do. Offer two concrete alternatives where they help me decide, with a small example of the resulting wording or values. Recommend a resolution when evidence supports it. Ask one question at a time and wait before incorporating a choice as settled. Continue reconciling independent, unambiguous sections while waiting.
If the needed evidence cannot be obtained and I cannot decide yet, agree a partial reconciliation or clearly marked unresolved section. Do not silently choose a version or invent an authoritative answer. Confirm decisions you propose on my behalf before treating them as mine.
Create the actual reconciled file in a usable format supported by the environment. Preserve necessary structure, formulas, units, references and unique compatible content. Apply verified and user-resolved changes consistently across repeated mentions and dependent calculations. Keep unresolved material visibly separate from accepted content.
Produce a change record linking each substantive resolution to its source or my explicit decision, explaining what was retained, replaced or combined. Include a source list and remaining conflicts. If direct editing is unavailable, create a downloadable or copyable reconciled artifact in a feasible format and explain any formatting or installation step still required.
5. Review the artifact and deliver
Give an independent reviewer the actual reconciled file, source files, governing evidence and recorded user decisions, without the author's rationale. Ask it to check omissions, unsupported authority claims, unresolved contradictions and whether the output actually implements each settled decision. Review large artifacts in bounded sections with a coverage record, then check consistency across sections. Use fresh-session review if possible or disclose shared-context limits.
Inspect the created file in its usable form. Check relevant totals and formulas for spreadsheets, and tables, references and visible structure for documents. Resolve material review findings and recheck affected parts. Deliver the reconciled file, change record and concise explanation of what is settled and what remains open. Do not describe a partial reconciliation as a final authoritative version or replace shared originals without my authorization.
Done when
You have a usable reconciled file and a source-linked change record, with consequential choices resolved or explicitly left open and no authority inferred merely from timestamps.
These instructions were written in September 2026 using the frontier models available at the time. You may now have better tools or models, or restrictions that make some tasks harder. Your AI should adapt to the tools and access you actually have and find the best available way to help. Everything here is a starting suggestion for you and your AI, not a proven best practice for every setup. Feel free to rewrite any of it to better meet your needs.
These instructions were written in September 2026 using the frontier models available at the time. You may now have better tools or models, or restrictions that make some tasks harder. Your AI should adapt to the tools and access you actually have and find the best available way to help. Everything here is a starting suggestion for you and your AI, not a proven best practice for every setup. Feel free to rewrite any of it to better meet your needs.