Can you license SOPs and your knowledge base to AI companies?
A standard operating procedure says how work should run. A tidy wiki is not the prize on its own, because any company can write one and many are public. What an AI company values is the procedure next to the record of how it was actually used and revised, with the comments that show where the written rule and the real work parted ways.
What a knowledge base contains
| Procedures and checklists | Step-by-step instructions for recurring work, including the ones nobody follows exactly. |
| Version history | How a procedure changed over time and why, if the edits carry notes. |
| Comments on pages | Questions from staff and answers from the owner of the page. |
| Runbooks | Instructions for handling an incident or a recurring failure. |
| Onboarding guides | What a new hire is taught, which shows what the company thinks matters. |
Where the documents live and what an export gives you
| Tool | What an export gives you | What is missing or needs an admin |
|---|---|---|
| Confluence | Spaces and pages export to PDF, HTML, Word or XML by a space admin. | Only the published version of a page is exported, so draft changes are lost, and comments come through in some formats but not others. |
| Notion | Pages and databases export as Markdown, spreadsheet files, HTML or PDF, and an admin can export a whole workspace. | Comments come through only in the HTML export, pages a person cannot see are left out, and download links expire. |
| SharePoint | Document libraries can be downloaded or copied out by users with access, and an admin can run larger extractions. | Version history lives inside the system, so a plain download usually gives only the latest version. |
| Google Drive | Documents can be downloaded in common formats, and an admin can export a user's files. | Comments and suggested edits can be lost in a download, and shared drives and personal folders are handled separately. |
Tool names belong to their owners and are used only to say where records usually live. Export features change by plan and version, so check the current rules for your account.
Internal beats public
A help article that is public on your website is already available to every AI company, so it adds little. The same text with the internal comments, the draft history and the version that was replaced is worth more, and the internal-only runbooks are worth more again.
Where written rules and real work part
The most useful pages are the ones with a comment saying that this step is skipped on weekends, or that the form changed last month. Those small notes show the gap between the rule and the practice, and a clean wiki with no discussion hides it.
What stays out
| Public articles | Anything already published on your website is dropped, because it adds nothing new. |
| Policies with personal data | HR procedures that name people, pay or disciplinary cases are excluded. |
| Documents owned by others | Client manuals, partner specifications and licensed templates are checked for rights, and most are left out. |
An example, invented for illustration
A managed services firm keeps eight years of runbooks and customer onboarding guides in a wiki, with comments on many pages. The public help center is dropped. The internal runbooks, with their edit history and comments, are the first set, and customer names in examples are replaced.
Questions owners ask about this
We have a handful of long manuals. Is that enough?
Usually not on its own. A few documents with no history and no discussion are thin. They work better as part of a larger set with tickets or chat.
Do old, outdated procedures matter?
Yes, as long as they are kept with their dates. The older version next to the newer one shows what changed and often why.
Can we license our training course material?
Course material you wrote is yours to license in principle, but any licensed content inside it is checked first. It is treated as a separate set from procedures.
Keep reading
Related kinds of records
- Support tickets: The whole thread, wrong guesses included, with customers replaced by stand-ins.
- Project and task history: Jira, Asana, Linear, Monday, Trello, ClickUp and Airtable comments and status changes, not task titles.
Industries that keep these records
- Law firms: Revision trails and intake emails, with privileged matter files kept out entirely.
- Accounting firms: Review notes and adjusting-entry explanations; client financials never enter the set.
- Software companies: Tickets, postmortems and renewal threads; customers appear everywhere and code is a separate deal.