Why AI Sits in the Middle of Our Workflows, Not the End
AI assists at the drafting stage and is never the step that issues work to a client. A qualified person reviews every draft against its evidence, and a separate human decision approves it. The question for any supplier: where does the AI sit, and what happens next?
There is a specific question worth asking any supplier who builds an AI-assisted workflow: where, exactly, in the sequence does the AI sit? Not “do you use AI”, because almost everyone will say yes, but where in the chain of steps, and what happens immediately after it. This article answers that question for the workflows we build.
01. The nine steps a piece of work moves through
| # | Step | Human gate? |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Interface | |
| 2 | Structured intake | |
| 3 | Evidence and data | |
| 4 | Workflow and knowledge | |
| 5 | AI assistance | |
| 6 | Human review | Yes: a qualified person reads the draft against its evidence |
| 7 | Approval | Yes: a separate human decision |
| 8 | Client-ready deliverable | Produced only after steps 6 and 7 |
| 9 | Reporting |
AI assistance is step five. Human review is step six, immediately after it, every time. Approval is step seven, a second and separate human decision. The deliverable is produced and issued at step eight, after both human gates.
That ordering is not incidental. It is the design choice that makes AI assistance safe to have at all.
02. What “assists” means here
A draft is assembled: the routine composition an expert would otherwise do by hand, built from evidence that has already been gathered and attributed. It is explicitly marked as a draft, and it is a starting point for review, never a finished output. Nothing it produces is client-facing at any point before a person has read it against its sources.
03. Why it is a rule, not a setting
A setting can be turned off under time pressure, when a deadline is tight and everything “probably looks fine”. A design rule cannot. The workflow is built so that assistance is structurally incapable of reaching a client without passing through review. It is not merely discouraged from doing so.
We word this commitment identically wherever it appears, on the homepage, on What We Build and on Trust, because a rule that changes depending on which page you are reading, or which week it is, is not a rule. It is also the substance behind what we do and do not do with your data.
04. What the reviewer does, and what is recorded
A qualified person reads the draft against the evidence it was built from and changes what needs changing. That step cannot be skipped or configured away. It exists because the assistance step exists, as its counterweight.
What the reviewer produces is a reviewed piece of work and a record of what was changed. That record becomes part of the audit trail: what was used, who approved it, when and on which version. For why that matters months after delivery, see audit trail and traceability. It is also why automation removes the work rather than the people.
05. Five questions for any supplier
If a supplier proposes an AI-assisted workflow for your team, ask:
- Where in the sequence does the AI sit? If it is the last step, a person is not the final check.
- What happens immediately after it? The answer should be a named human review.
- Can that review be switched off? If it can, it will be, under pressure.
- Is approval a separate decision, recorded against a specific version? An email saying “fine” is not a record.
- What record exists of what the reviewer changed? If none, the audit trail has a gap exactly where it matters.
06. Why this holds beyond one workflow
Once an organisation is comfortable with AI assisting inside one workflow, the natural next question is whether the same principle holds everywhere else AI touches the operation. For anything we build, it does, because the rule is not “AI is fine here specifically”. It is “AI assists, a person decides”, applied the same way whichever workflow it is inside.
07. Frequently asked questions
Where does AI sit in your workflows?
At step five of nine, the drafting stage. It is never the step that issues work to a client.
What happens immediately after the AI step?
A qualified person reviews the draft against its evidence. Approval follows as a second, separate human decision, and only then is the deliverable produced.
Can the human review be turned off?
No. It is a design rule, not a setting. The workflow is built so that assistance cannot reach a client without passing through review.
What does the AI actually produce?
A draft: routine composition built from evidence that has already been gathered and attributed, marked as a draft and never client-facing before a person has read it.
Is the reviewer’s work recorded?
Yes. A record of what was changed becomes part of the audit trail.
Does this apply to every workflow you build?
Yes. The rule is “AI assists, a person decides”, applied the same way in every workflow.
08. Next step
Read the full governance commitments in one place: access, review, traceability and exit. How the work is controlled →
