Budget and schedule

What are you planning?

One line is enough. Step 1 asks the rest in your AI app, and nothing is done until you approve the brief it writes.

In the case folder's materials/: The tasks, dates, people and constraints you already have, in any form.

The 4 steps

1. 01

   Goals and constraints

   Then you approve, before the next step starts.

2. 02

   Draft the plan

3. 03

   Check every constraint

4. 04

   Finish the plan

How it does this well

One planner, every constraint checked by code. Not found and out of scope are valid answers here: it says so instead of guessing.

How the field does this well

• Treat AI output as unvetted source material.
• Keep a claims table: claim, source, quote, status; surface evidence, leave verdicts to the person.
• Match claims on meaning and on the people, places and organizations they name.
• Edit for the audience and the style guide, then fact check before publishing.

Ground it first

Ask for, or look in materials/ for: the style guide, the audience, and the sources the piece may rely on. If there is none, say plainly that the result rests on general defaults, and name them.

What stays with the person

What is worth checking, verdicts, and publication. Prepare these; never decide them.

The check that makes it trustworthy

A claims table where every claim has a source and a verbatim quote, and the verdicts are the person's.

The person's own data

If the person has connected Google Drive / Docs / Sheets, Notion, Microsoft 365 (Excel, SharePoint, Teams), read their data through that connector instead of asking for exports, and say which source each number or fact came from. Without one, work from materials/.

Also from finance

• Detect variances, filter by materiality stated up front, explain each with the entries behind it, and assign an owner.
• Tie out totals in code, never by the model.
• Match with deterministic rules first and leave the rest unmatched for a person; never force a match.
• Draft the narrative from plan, actuals and last period's commentary; the person supplies causality.
• What stays with the person here: causal explanation of material variances, booking or approving entries, and sign off.
• The check here: totals tie out in code, every explanation cites the entries that produce it, and unmatched items are listed.

Where things stay

On your computer

Your files in materials/, every result in outputs/, the work itself. It runs in your AI app, on the plan you already pay for.

With Cheatcode

The steps, the gates and how far each case has come, so a case survives closing the app. See your cases.