The RFI Template

On a jobsite, when the drawings don't add up, you do not guess and pour concrete. You issue a Request for Information: stop, name the ambiguity, route the question to whoever owns the call. A model will never do this on its own. It fills the gap with its most plausible guess and builds ten steps on top of it, so this form is how you build the stop into the work yourself.

Pull it out the moment something material doesn't line up: the premise and the output disagree, a requirement is fuzzy, or the AI is proceeding on an assumption nobody actually confirmed. Work stops until the answer comes back. That's the whole discipline.

The form

• Job / build: which project this belongs to
• Date raised: when you stopped
• What I was told: the premise the work has been standing on. Write it as you believed it. "We have a GovCloud server."
• What I'm seeing: what the drawings, the logs, or the output actually show. Facts, not interpretation.
• The specific conflict: one sentence. Where the premise and the reality refuse to line up.
• What I need answered before work continues: the exact question. Not "clarify the setup." A question one person can answer with a yes, a no, or one fact.
• What it costs to proceed wrong: name the slab you'd have to tear out. Rework, money, a schedule slip, a signed affirmation that becomes a false claim. If you can't name a cost, it may not be an RFI.
• Who answers this: AI, human expert, or me. Route it to whoever actually owns the call, not whoever is convenient.
• The answer: what came back, in writing
• Answered by / date: a name and a date, so the answer survives the conversation
• Work resumed: date. Nothing resumes before the two lines above are filled.

The rule

One RFI per question. If you're holding three ambiguities, that's three forms. And the machine gets a standing order in your constitution file: when something material is unclear, stop, surface it, and route the question to me. The RFI that stops you at the build stage is cheap. The one nobody issued gets discovered after the pour.