The Submittal Template

On a jobsite you do not install and hope. You submit: here is the product I propose, here is why this one and not those, here is who signs off. With AI the move is the same. Before the machine builds anything real, it hands you this, and nothing gets installed until a verdict is on the record. The submittal preserves the reasoning, not just the choice, so that three months from now nobody, including future you, mistakes a careful call for something arbitrary and cleans it away.

The form

• Job / build: which project this belongs to
• Date submitted: when the proposal hit the table
• The outcome, in plain language: what this thing does for the human using it. One or two sentences. If the AI can't say it plain, it doesn't understand the job.
• What the AI proposes (the materials list): the stack and tools it intends to use, the approach in a few lines, and the data it will touch, create, or move. All three, specifically. "Some database stuff" is not a submittal.
• Alternatives considered: what else was on the table, and why this one and not those
• What I checked it against: the spec, the constitution file, the certification scan, the source of truth. Name the document, not the vibe.
• Locked facts: the handful of things nailed down to the character, where drift is disaster: exact names, exact titles, which single file the facts live in. Everything not on this line stays open.
• The verdict, circle one:
• Approved: build it exactly as proposed
• Approved as noted: build it, with the corrections written below. The notes are part of the approval.
• Revise and resubmit: not rejected, not approved. Fix it and bring it back. No building the "safe parts" in the meantime.
• Notes: the corrections, on the record
• Approved by / date: a name. The signature is a human act. The machine drafts the submittal; it never signs it.

The rule

The choice lives in the code. The why lives here. A decision on the record is a decision that cannot be quietly deleted by someone who never understood it.