Worked example
Operations signal review and exception routing.
A realistic design for turning alerts, logs, forecasts, and work records into reviewable exceptions without giving AI hidden authority over physical systems, safety settings, or systems of record.
Source layer
Start with the records the workflow is allowed to trust.
A useful assistant needs approved sources, current ownership, access rules, and visible gaps before it can prepare work for review.
AI may
Prepare work for accountable review.
- Group related signals and identify likely duplicates.
- Prepare a time-ordered summary with source links.
- Flag missing context, stale signals, and conflicting state.
- Suggest an owner from approved routing rules.
- Draft a recommendation from documented options for review.
AI may never
Cross the authority boundary.
- Control physical equipment or change safety settings.
- Write authoritative state without a checked and approved path.
- Suppress an alert because it appears inconvenient or duplicative.
- Invent a cause, impact, or action unsupported by evidence.
- Close an exception without the required disposition and owner review.
End-to-end workflow
Each handoff names the AI role, accountable authority, and evidence.
The example keeps uncertainty and exceptions visible. A plausible draft is never a substitute for an approved decision.
| Step | AI may | Authority stays with | Evidence captured |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Collect approved signals | Read permitted alerts, logs, forecasts, work records, and operating context. | System owners define source access, freshness, and authoritative state. | Signal IDs, timestamps, source health, access, and freshness. |
| 2. Group and contextualize | Associate related signals, identify duplicates, and prepare a time-ordered summary. | Operations owners confirm correlation rules and critical-context requirements. | Grouped signals, correlation reason, missing context, and confidence. |
| 3. Prepare an exception | Draft the observed condition, likely impact, evidence, and possible next checks. | A qualified reviewer determines whether an exception exists and how it is classified. | Draft exception, sources, reviewer edits, severity, and disposition. |
| 4. Route to the right owner | Suggest the accountable team and required review path from approved routing policy. | The receiving owner accepts, reroutes, or rejects the handoff. | Suggested owner, accepted owner, route time, reroute reason, and queue state. |
| 5. Recommend controlled action | Prepare a recommendation within documented options and limits. | People, policy, and control systems approve or execute consequential actions. | Recommendation, option set, approval, executed action, and readback. |
| 6. Capture disposition | Summarize the final cause, response, exceptions, and evidence gaps for review. | Operations owners approve lessons and changes to rules, sources, or evals. | Disposition, outcome, false-positive label, correction, and follow-up owner. |
Example private evals
Judge the workflow against organization-specific review standards.
These evaluation categories show how workflow owners can set baselines, thresholds, review responses, and release gates before implementation.
| Evaluation | What it measures | What happens next |
|---|---|---|
| Signal grouping quality | Whether related events are grouped without hiding distinct incidents. | Bad merges and missed relationships become evaluation cases. |
| Exception precision | Reviewed true exceptions, false positives, and missed exceptions. | Thresholds and context requirements change only through owner review. |
| Routing acceptance | Whether the proposed owner accepts the exception without avoidable rerouting. | Reroute reasons update the ownership map and test set. |
| Evidence completeness | Whether the handoff includes required sources, timestamps, context, and known gaps. | Incomplete evidence blocks recommendation or routes to investigation. |
| Operating outcome | Review time, exception aging, accepted actions, and adverse effects without assuming causal lift. | Observed outcomes support expand, tune, hold, or stop decisions. |
Feedback loop
Review decisions should improve the next cycle.
The useful output is not only the prepared work. It is the record of corrections, exceptions, dispositions, and source gaps that makes future work easier to review.
Apply the pattern
Have a similar workflow that needs a defensible next step?
Start with the sources, authority, review path, evaluation evidence, and outcome decision. Verdify can help determine whether an audit, knowledge pass, or workflow sprint comes first.