List the steps, tools, and people involved. Agree on what AI may do and how you will check the result.
What You Keep
Your system should stay yours.
You keep the accounts, data, approval rights, and operating history. We document the system so your team can understand it, change it, and evaluate other tools.
- Your team keeps Accounts + decisions
- Substrate records State + evidence
- Vendors provide Replaceable infrastructure
One ownership story
You should be able to leave with everything that matters.
See what we deliver, what your team controls, and which services come from outside vendors.
01 / 04 Map → pilot → control
Know what happens at each stage.
Plan the task, test a first version, then add ongoing support when the system is ready for live work.
Build and test one agreed task. Keep its code, work history, and instructions together.
Decide which tasks can run automatically, which need approval, and which must stop.
Receipts
workflow mapcontrolled pilotoperating control
02 / 04 Show what must stop
Your team decides which actions are allowed.
The plan shows the information AI uses, the work it can prepare, who approves it, and the record kept afterward.
Who owns what canvas
Your team decides which actions are allowed.
This example shows how a claim moves through review. AI can prepare the work; the responsible person approves consequential actions.
1. Map Claim intake packet before execution. Claims operations owner owns the operating path. The canvas makes the workflow, handoffs, and next decision legible before an agent or system acts. 2. Claim system triage can run when the rule is clear. Claim system triage coordinates with Coverage context summary; the map keeps AI assistance bounded to the work it can safely support. 3. Adjuster review stays with a person. Adjuster handles coverage uncertainty, fraud flags, payout, denial, and sensitive messaging. 4. No payout or denial authority is the stop condition. Stop before coverage decision, payout, denial, or fraud escalation without authority. 5. Claims queue receipt shows the receipt. Shows triage class, missing documents, adjuster state, and customer-contact trail. 6. Use the map as booking context for a workflow pilot. The map has enough owner, assistive work, system behavior, and decision context for a first run.
Workflow map Editable workflow
Run Wait Stop
Press enter or space to select a node. You can then use the arrow keys to move the node around. Press delete to remove it and escape to cancel.
Press enter or space to select an edge. You can then press delete to remove it or escape to cancel.
Evidence
- allowed routing
- named authority
- stop conditions
- audit trail
03 / 04 Keep the durable assets
Keep the instructions and work history.
Your team keeps the account details, access rules, approvals, instructions, and work history. The handover also explains how to remove access.
One workflow, source systems, owners, handoffs, and failure points.
What your team owns, what CREATE SOMETHING owns, and what vendors provide.
Which tools the agent can use, the access it needs, and the limits on each action.
Auto-allow, approval-needed, and blocked states with reasons.
How to run the system, check a release, undo a change, and recover from failure.
A view of current work in your application or our database system, Substrate.
Receipts
workflow maptool contractpolicy rulesrunbookoperator brief
04 / 04 Conviction without dependence
Built with OpenAI. Prepared for change.
We build primarily with OpenAI Codex. Your project keeps its data, code, tool definitions, instructions, tests, and recovery guide. A different model must pass the relevant checks before you switch. CREATE SOMETHING maintains the system layer; Cloudflare provides infrastructure and OpenAI provides intelligence.
Development tool and portable exit
The AI coding tool we use to build the project and help your team make the next change.
Your team keeps the business context, permissions, tests, work history, and recovery instructions.
The same tool definitions and test tasks can help compare Claude, open-weight models, and custom models.
What each part does
Substrate OpenAI
Our database system stores the records, tasks, approvals, and work history. APIs and MCP let approved software access it.
CloudflareCloudflare provides hosting and storage. We document who owns the account, who pays for it, and how to undo a release.
OpenAI provides the AI models and coding tools. Your rules determine which tools an agent can use and when it needs approval.
Start with the workflow
Bring the workflow, the accounts, and the decision owner.
We’ll agree on the task, the tools it needs, and who can approve its actions before implementation starts.
- Owner
- Workflow owner
- Authority
- Owned stack boundary
- Proof
- Controlled path + decision states
- State
- review
- 01 / Workflow First workflow map
Objects, source systems, owners, handoffs, and failure points.
- 02 / Boundary Vendor and ownership boundary
What your team owns, what I deliver, and what vendors provide.
- 03 / Control Decision states
Auto-allow, approval-needed, and blocked states with reasons.