I Opened the Folder and 'Final' Was Standing in Line
One Monday, I went looking for a card news draft on my Windows device and found a parade in the folder: final, final2, really-final. Files made by the bot on the Mac mini were mixed with files I had edited by hand, and there was no way to tell which one was newest without opening each of them.
The problem was not having many files. The problem was that the filenames never said which one was the latest.
Before
• Average of 11 files per topic
• Finding the latest version: about 10 minutes (opening each file to check the date)
• Rework based on an outdated file: 4 times a month
Once, a bot kept polishing a draft from three days earlier, and sentences I had already fixed came back to life. It was not the bot's fault. Nobody had ever told it which file was the newest.
Two Changes
First, I added one line of naming rule to the instructions given to the bots.
Filename: date_topic_vNumber.md (e.g. 2026-10-20_card-news_v3.md)
When editing, do not overwrite. Just raise the v number.
Second, I put a single latest.md at the top of the folder and had the bots write the newest filename there in one line whenever a new version appeared. Bots and humans both open that file first.
After
• Average of 3 files per topic (v1 to v3)
• Finding the latest version: 10 seconds (open latest.md)
• Rework on outdated files: from 4 times a month to 0
A Small Realization
Humans guess the latest version by gut feeling, but bots do not guess. So the rule does not need to be long, it just needs to live in one fixed place. One naming line and one guide file were enough. If you open a folder today and see two or more files called final, try adding a single line to your instructions first.