Quick answer: The Hydra Business Intelligence Specification (HBIS) is the intake format for the expanded Central Intelligence engine: 21 Obsidian-ready markdown files, in four parts, that describe every dimension of a business — heavily cross-linked with [[internal links]] so the result reads like the knowledge graph it becomes. It is how a business goes from “we have a website” to “our business has a brain, and the website is one of its outputs.”
Why 21 files instead of a questionnaire?
Because a questionnaire captures answers, and a vault captures understanding. Forms flatten a business into rows. Files with links preserve the relationships — and the relationships are where the intelligence is. A service connects to the products behind it, the warranty on those products, the financing that pays for them, and the technician certified to install them. Write those as four form fields and the connections die. Write them as linked files and every downstream system — content generation, AI search answers, local pages — can walk the graph and get the full story.
What's in the vault?
Part 1 — Core identity & operations. Entity (the knowledge-graph root: who the business is, every location, every review platform, the whole digital footprint), Soul (origin story, values, the anti-corporate pitch, brand voice & tone — how every page should sound, down to phrases that would never be said), Systems (the operating manual: tech stack, accounts & access, lead routing and contact channels, dispatch, emergency protocol), Sales (the process from first call to booked job, scripts, objection handling), and People (the E-E-A-T roster — owner bio with LinkedIn and headshot, leadership, every public-facing team member with name, title, and photo).
Part 2 — Catalog, market & economics. Partners (manufacturers with the featured dealer flagged, distributors and TSMs with contacts, the full vendor network), Services (the catalog plus service promises — free estimates, free second opinions, same-day terms, price-match), Geo (per-city market intelligence: subdivisions, housing stock, utilities, permits and code enforcement), Personas, Economics (pricing strategy, margins, financial goals), Products & SKUs, Memberships & Financing (plans, protection plans, lease agreements, rebates, energy programs), and Referrals & Partnerships.
Part 3 — Proof, marketing & performance. Licensing & Certifications (every license per state, bonding, insurance, legal documents), Press & Media, Community Impact, Marketing Calendar, Paid Ads, Analytics (property IDs and access, baselines, AI visibility goals), and Conversions (call tracking, form rates, attribution).
Part 4 — Brand & goals. Brand & Directives: the visual identity, photography style, design direction (the style blend, sites you love and why, designs you never want), UI/UX preferences, banned words, the always-do / never-do constitution, and the revenue and lead goals the website is accountable for.
What keeps it honest?
Two rules, written into the specification itself. First, no guessing: anything the intake can't source from real materials is flagged [Missing — operator to fill during upload] instead of invented. A business brain with fabricated facts would confidently generate fabricated marketing — so the spec treats a gap as more valuable than a guess. Second, no credentials in the vault: account holders, property IDs, and delegation intent are captured; passwords never are. Access handoff happens inside the secure onboarding flow.
How the vault gets validated
When the files come back — whether a client's AI generated them or our guided wizard assembled them — the upload page parses all 21, checks every required section, scores coverage per file, and routes anything missing into a short guided form. Nothing is discarded; every section makes the site better. The vault then seeds the client's Central Intelligence Center, the Hydra Build team is notified, and the build begins from knowledge instead of from a kickoff-call transcript.
Why this matters for AI search
AI answer engines cite businesses whose facts are consistent, connected, and verifiable. That consistency can't be bolted on at the page level — it has to exist at the source. The vault is the source: one canonical spelling of every service, every city, every credential, every promise, linked into one graph. It's the same discipline behind our public Open Knowledge Format bundle, applied to every client's private intelligence.
