# Appendix H: The Whole-Job Loop, One Page

From Let the AI Be Smart by Jason Santiago. lettheaibesmart.com/tools

**1.** Say the outcome in plain language. What the thing does in the world, and the why underneath it. No tool names, no method, no workflow you already pictured.

**2.** Go into discovery mode and stay wide. Talk the idea through before anyone writes an outline. Ask "what did I miss?" and keep asking. Your first description is a symptom; you've hit the real problem when one fix makes a pile of complaints vanish at once.

**3.** Set boundaries, not blinders. Name the real walls: budget, law, safety, time, audience. Kill the fake ones, the tool you named before you understood the need. Constrain consequences, not intelligence.

**4.** Lock for execution. Once the drilling is done and every real constraint is baked in, close the spec and hand it off. Wide while you're figuring out what it is, tight once you know.

**5.** Run the Council pass. Same real context to each model, no costumes, everyone answers blind. Read for real forks, not reworded agreement. Keep the Operator in the room.

**6.** Demand provenance. Every claim names its source and wears a label: documented fact, supported inference, hypothesis, or unverified. Ask what evidence would kill the claim everyone is getting comfortable with.

**7.** Get a verdict and sign it. Synthesis decides; it never averages. Carry the minority report forward on the record. Then you sign, and if there's drag in your gut, you don't.

**8.** Verify in the real thing. Open it in a real browser at phone size, screenshot it, confirm the data actually landed. Outside eyes only. The builder grading its own homework gets an A every time.

**9.** Walk the punch list. Go through the finished work like a jobsite walkthrough, write down every gap between what it says and what it does, and close them one by one before you call it done.

**10.** File the as-built. Record what you actually shipped, what changed from the plan, and what you learned, so the next job starts smarter than this one did.