Playbooks live under **Hiring → Playbooks** at [/hiring/playbooks](/hiring/playbooks). A playbook is a named group of **resources**: markdown documents written inside Kit, and links to material that lives elsewhere.

**Nothing in a playbook is ever shown to candidates.** It is your team's internal handbook — the career portal, candidate portal, and application emails never read from it.

An engineering team's playbook might hold:

| Resource | Kind |
|---|---|
| Company intro video | Link (YouTube — plays inline) |
| How we run the intro call | Document |
| Code review checklist — backend | Document |
| Culture-fit question bank | Document |
| Onsite logistics (Google Doc) | Link |

## Who can do what

| | Read | Create, edit, delete, reorder |
|---|---|---|
| Hiring **member** | Yes | No |
| Hiring **admin** | Yes | Yes |

Levels are per module, so a Hiring admin who is only a member in Outreach still has full write access here. See [Team Roles](/docs/team-roles).

## Documents and links

A **document** is markdown you write in Kit. The editor has a **Write / Preview** toggle; headings, tables, task lists, strikethrough, and bare URLs all render. Raw HTML is dropped, not escaped. Bodies are capped at 100,000 characters.

A **link** is a URL to something you already keep elsewhere. Press **Fetch preview** and YouTube, Vimeo, and Loom links get an inline player; anything else saves as a plain link, which is the normal case for docs and wikis. There are no file uploads — put the file where it already lives and link to it.

> [!WARNING]
> **A resource's type is fixed once it is saved.** A document cannot later become a link, or the reverse: switching would orphan the body and every version of it. To change type, create a new resource and delete the old one.

Admins can drag resources into order on the playbook page. Reordering is disabled while the filter box is in use, since a filtered list is a subset.

## Suggestions during stage setup

When you add or edit a resource, tick stage types under **Suggest during stage setup**: Submit Application, Code Assignment, Interview, Offer, Portfolio Review, Questionnaire, Reference Check, Take-Home Task, Team Review, Video Introduction, Video Response.

A teammate opening a stage of that type then sees a **From your playbook** panel listing the tagged resources. Each opens in a new tab, so nothing unsaved on the stage is lost.

The panel has a dismiss button, and dismissal is narrow on purpose:

- **Per person.** Hiding it never hides it for anyone else.
- **Per stage type.** Hiding it on Interview stages leaves it showing on Code Assignment stages.
- **Reopened by anything added later.** A resource tagged *after* someone dismissed the panel brings the panel back for that person. Silencing it once does not bury what the team writes next month.

## Version history

Every save that changes a resource's title, content, or URL writes a snapshot. The history panel sits beside the resource for people who can edit it: the six most recent versions, with older ones behind a toggle. Each entry names who saved it and which fields moved.

**View** opens a past version. **Restore** re-applies it — and restoring is a forward action: it writes a *new* version holding the old content rather than rewinding the trail. Nothing is erased, and you can restore your way back.

Deleting a resource deletes its history with it.

## Finding a resource

| Where | What it matches |
|---|---|
| Filter box on a playbook page (appears above 8 resources) | Substring of title, content, or URL |
| Cmd+K | Playbook names and resource titles |
| `hiring_search_playbooks` (agents) | Full-text, ranked, across titles, bodies, and playbook names |

Search is keyword-based, not semantic — "debrief scoring" finds those words, not a paraphrase of them.

## For AI agents

Four read-only tools. They need Hiring access and the connection's Hiring **read** scope — nothing else. To connect a client, see [AI Agent and MCP Tools](/docs/hiring-ai-agent-mcp).

| Tool | Returns |
|---|---|
| `hiring_list_playbooks` | Every playbook with its resources by title, kind, id, slug, and stage types. **No document bodies** — this is the map. |
| `hiring_get_playbook` | One playbook by `pbk_` id or slug, with bodies **truncated to 2,000 characters** and flagged when truncated. |
| `hiring_read_resource` | One resource by `rsc_` id or slug, **in full** — the complete body, or a link's URL. |
| `hiring_search_playbooks` | Ranked matches with a highlighted snippet and the `rsc_` id to follow up on. Snippets are excerpts. |

Search or list first, then `hiring_read_resource` for anything you need complete. `hiring_get_playbook` reads a whole playbook at a glance, so its truncation makes it the wrong last call before an agent answers a detailed question.

## Quick Checklist

- [ ] One playbook per kind of hire, not one per team
- [ ] Tag anything procedural with the stage types it applies to
- [ ] Link out to material already maintained elsewhere; only write documents in Kit for things Kit is the home for
- [ ] Get the type right the first time — it cannot be changed later
- [ ] Ask your AI assistant a question you already know the answer to, to check it is reading the right resource