Add Handoff Notes and Records

Unit ID: PAW-M10-U04 Estimated active time: 20-25 minutes

The question that arrives later

Weeks after something goes out, someone asks: was this checked, and by whom?

Without a record the honest answer is "probably", which is not an answer. A two-line note at the time prevents it.

What is worth recording

Not everything. For routine internal work, nothing.

For anything that went outside, affected a person, or informed a decision:

• which prompt or pattern, and which version;
• who reviewed it and against what;
• what was checked, and what was not;
• who approved it.

The handoff note

HANDOFF NOTE

Task:            monthly course summary, July
Pattern:         analysis and comparison v3
AI-assisted:     first draft of the figures table
Not AI-assisted: the recommendation, written by (name)
Reviewed by:     (name), against the five-criterion rubric
Checked:         all four figures traced to the source file
Not checked:     the year-on-year comparison -- source unavailable
Approved by:     (name), 2026-07-29

Eight lines. The "not checked" line is the one that protects everybody, and it is the one most often left out.

Say what was AI-assisted

Where an output carries weight, note which parts were drafted with assistance and which were not.

This is not a confession. It tells a later reader where to look hardest, and it is increasingly expected in regulated and public-facing work.

Records make patterns improvable

Beyond accountability, records are data. Three months of handoff notes show which steps get checked, which get skipped, and where the same correction keeps appearing.

That is the input to the next version of your pattern.

Mini practice

Write a handoff note for something you produced recently with AI assistance.

Fill the "not checked" line honestly.

Decide whether that gap is acceptable, and if not, what step in the workflow closes it.

Mark complete