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.
35 of 71 field notes · 2026 archive
Release AI agent write actions in stages: proposals, approved execution with receipts, narrow automatic actions, server-side limits and evidence to advance.
A proposed RMA process: order matching, quoted return terms, safe evidence uploads, separated complaints and return decisions made by authorized staff.
A proposed workflow for lease options and notice windows: dates stored as sourced computations, amendment checks, notice requirements and escalating reminders.
How to move an AI workflow from full human review to sampling: written criteria, reviewer agreement, per-risk groups, staged reductions and reset triggers.
A proposed business credit workflow: completeness checks, sourced financial figures, organized references, analyst-owned decisions and approved notices.
A proposed professional services workflow: transcript-quoted action items, unclear owners left unclear, scope flags and nothing sent to a client unreviewed.
A proposed estoppel workflow for sales and refinancings: a sourced lease baseline, field-by-field comparison of returned certificates and recorded decisions.
A proposed engagement letter workflow: approved templates, facts from confirmed intake, visible gaps, no generated fee terms and a recorded lawyer approval.
A proposed submittal workflow: confirmed spec checklists, sourced completeness findings, original files intact and engineering judgment kept with reviewers.
A proposed workflow for Columbus benchmarking: meter inventory, sourced bill data, consistency checks and a review package before Portfolio Manager submission.
A proposed docketing workflow: AI extracts trigger events and periods with source quotes, code computes dates, and a docketing reviewer confirms each entry.
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.
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.
A proposed field-report workflow that turns photos, notes and forms into a reviewable draft, keeping who observed what and leaving conclusions to engineers.
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 lease abstraction workflow where every extracted field carries its source passage, document version and open interpretation questions.
A proposed matter-closeout workflow that reconciles the checklist across systems and reviews access before anything changes, under the firm's own rules.
A proposed review-comment workflow that suggests duplicate groups while keeping every original comment, its revision and an authorized closure decision.
A proposed accounts payable workflow that matches invoices against purchasing records and routes exceptions to people before any payment is authorized.
A proposed vendor document workflow with separate requested, received, under review, accepted, rejected and superseded states, so receipt is never approval.
A proposed review queue for legal billing narratives that flags missing context and asks precise questions, without inventing work or changing time.
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 purchasing worksheet that keeps quote differences, source locations and clarification questions visible instead of ranking incomplete quotes.
Teams argue about whether the agent should be autonomous. Wrong unit. Set autonomy per action, using reversibility and blast radius, and earn each step up with evidence.
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.
Design a usable review queue with named approvers, exact action previews, expiry, escalation, and execution receipts.
A proposed workflow for collecting change evidence, checking baselines, routing impact reviews, and preserving engineering approval boundaries.
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.
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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