← Pathway Lens · 02 / Boundary Controls · 03 / Operational Standards
Before an AI output touches a customer, record, tool, decision, or transaction, I want to know what that output is actually allowed to become.
01 / Review layer · Supporting research tool · Working note
I use these questions as a lightweight first review. They are meant to expose authority, evidence, reversibility, and ownership before a pathway gains more consequence.
What can the AI output become?
Draft, recommendation, decision input, customer message, record, tool action, transaction, or production change?
Can it enter external communication?
Can it be sent to customers, partners, public channels, regulators, or affected users?
Can it enter a system of record?
Can it create or update a record that future people or systems rely on?
Can it trigger a tool, action, or API?
Does it have access to send, approve, update, delete, transact, deploy, or notify?
Who has authority to approve?
Is the approver authorized and responsible for the relevant pathway?
If it is wrong, how quickly can we detect it?
Real time, minutes, hours, days, weeks, or only after harm/dispute/audit?
Once detected, who can stop it?
Is there a named person, team, or automated control with authority to pause, revoke, contain, or escalate?
Can we rollback, compensate, or contain?
If rollback is impossible, is there a compensating action or recovery path?
What evidence must be preserved?
What is enough to reconstruct the pathway without creating excessive privacy or security risk?
What changes require revalidation?
Authority, data sensitivity, external consequence, risk class, scale, model behavior, policy/legal/consent change, or incident signal?
Do not govern every AI output equally. Govern the pathway the output is allowed to enter.