Field notes
Production AI patterns we ship every week. Stuck pilots, MCP hardening, eval suites, agent orchestration, cost control. Written by Alex Cinovoj, Founder & CTO, TechTide AI · CTO & Co-Founder, CPG Playbook. No vendor pitches, no recycled blog posts.
37 of 71 field notes · 2026 archive
What to require at the end of an automation project: inventory, owned credentials, written rules, health signals, a rehearsed runbook and test evidence.
A proposed RMA process: order matching, quoted return terms, safe evidence uploads, separated complaints and return decisions made by authorized staff.
A proposed handover workflow using a COBie-style structure: data needs per asset type, schedule matching, sourced attributes and owner-recorded acceptance.
A proposed professional services workflow: transcript-quoted action items, unclear owners left unclear, scope flags and nothing sent to a client unreviewed.
A CRM migration plan built on reconciliation: scoped objects, field maps by meaning, source IDs, people-led duplicate merges, rehearsal loads and sample checks.
Questions to ask before hiring a workflow or AI automation consultant: account ownership, scope, testing, failure handling, AI decisions, pricing and handoff.
Move an n8n integration from prototype to production: business-owned credentials, separate environments, authenticated webhooks, error workflows and owners.
Plan a CRM integration field by field: one owning system per value, sync direction, stable record IDs, deletion rules and visible sync failures.
Copilot optimizes for keystrokes, Claude Code optimizes for tasks. Which to choose, where each fits, and how they differ on MCP tools, review, cost and governance.
A proposed delivery-packet workflow that checks issued files against reviewed revisions, approvals and the transmittal so the package can be reconstructed.
A proposed staffing workflow that suggests feasible assignments from current availability with visible assumptions, leaving the decision to a delivery manager.
A proposed sales handoff workflow that gives delivery staff the accepted commitment, its source document and the person who approved any exception.
AI-generated prototypes are the cheapest product research available. The failure is promoting one to production without tests, types, auth, or an owner. The handoff checklist we use.
A proposed portfolio reporting workflow that confirms which properties, periods and source files are present before totals or narrative are produced.
A forecast is not an individual diagnosis. Review ownership, costs, tests, expectations, and use-case fit against the project's evidence.
An illustrative planning sequence: review the pilot, address its foundations, and decide whether the acceptance evidence supports release.
How to write AI pilot acceptance criteria before the demo: observable behavior, the evidence that checks it, and what happens when the workflow cannot finish.
Six months after the first AI feature ships, the debt shows up as prompt sprawl, untyped tools, no eval baseline, and nobody able to say what changed. How we pay it down.
A proposed renewal packet that separates delivered, accepted, client-reported and measured results from open issues, without a generated success story.
A proposed order-change workflow that establishes the current accepted order, checks the affected systems and collects approval before applying the change.
The agent does not need to be right every time. It needs to know when it is out of depth. Four escalation triggers, plus the handoff payload that makes a human fast.
A proposed client reporting workflow that drafts status reports from bounded project evidence and leaves missing facts visible for the delivery lead.
A proposed vendor document workflow with separate requested, received, under review, accepted, rejected and superseded states, so receipt is never approval.
Swarms demo well and page you at 2am. Three orchestration patterns survive real traffic, and the choice is decided by failure isolation, not elegance.
How to write n8n recovery steps operators can follow: alerts that point to a decision, failure classes, deliberate retries, preserved evidence and rehearsal.
A proposed transmittal workflow that reconciles documents, revisions, approvals and recipients into a reviewable packet before distribution.
A proposed scope-change workflow that compares client requests with the current agreed scope and prepares the decision for the delivery owner to approve.
A proposed maintenance routing workflow that keeps the tenant's original words, applies the property's escalation rules and shows uncertain cases to a person.
A proposed legal document request workflow: one record per requested item, original files kept, missing items visible, and counsel deciding sufficiency.
Fourteen nodes in a state graph to answer refund questions. Size the stack to the problem: one loop, typed tools, a log, and only then a framework.
Every MCP server ships two products at once: the tools and the attack surface. Fourteen checks on auth, scoping, tenancy, argument validation, and audit trails.
No eval suite means every change is a vibe. Five days: harvest real tasks, write assertions, set the pass bar, wire CI, then gate deploys on it.
A proposed onboarding workflow connecting approved scope, client inputs, access requests, and delivery readiness without inventing commitments.
A proposed RFI intake workflow that preserves drawing references, routes questions, and keeps contractual decisions with authorized reviewers.
A proposed workflow for transaction document intake, version tracking, missing-item review, and controlled reminders.
MIT says 95%, Gartner says 40%, vendor decks say 88%. They measure different things. What each stat counts, and the five gaps that separate shipped from shelved.
A proposed legal intake workflow with source-linked facts, conflict-review routing, confidential data boundaries, and human approval.
Buying guides on alexcinovoj.com and engineering notes on alexcinovoj.dev, published alongside these field notes.
Companion reading
How to read an implementation quote: process clarity, data preparation, integrations, review and recovery, and operating ownership. A proposed evaluation method, not a price list.
Published October 29, 2026 · January 2026 collection
A decision guide for choosing between software you already own, an extension and a custom integration, with exit paths and a bounded trial before expanding. The examples are hypothetical.
Published October 29, 2026 · February 2026 collection
A procurement method that asks every supplier the same questions about scope, working evidence, acceptance criteria, security boundaries and handoff. It does not rank agencies.
Published October 29, 2026 · February 2026 collection
A walkthrough of ClawKeeper's deterministic agent policy, tenant checks and payment approval gate, based on seven synthetic policy tests run at one inspected revision, with its known trust boundaries.
Published October 29, 2026 · January–March 2026 collection
A source-code reading of CipherClaw's trace graph, root-cause heuristics and breakpoints at one inspected revision, with its implementation limits. The review did not run the test suite.
Published October 29, 2026 · January–March 2026 collection
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