Directive anatomy

Build-along · ~12 min at your own keyboard

A directive is an SOP written for an AI employee: what we're doing, what comes in, the steps, what to do when it's weird, and how we know it's done. Five sections. Miss the edge cases and you get graceful, silent failure. One lead follow-up sent instead of the whole batch, no error thrown.

Your starter: Authority pre-check on a draft

Instructions

Make it yours: Paste a draft you have on your desk, keep every never-line, and add the one failure shape your practice has actually seen (the case that was overruled, the pin that was wrong).

AUTHORITY PRE-CHECK

- Read the draft at [path]. The parties stay lettered; if a name survived, stop and say so.
- Pull every case, statute, rule and regulation into a table, one per line, including the ones in string cites, footnotes and parentheticals.
- Beside each write where I open it: [reporter] / [official code] / [court rulebook] / [agency site].
- Flag the three shapes: a case with no pin cite, a case attached to a proposition it may not support, a quotation with no page.
- Mark every line VERIFY. It is not a citation until you have opened it. Count the lines and the flags.

NEVER:
- Never write confirmed, correct, checked or holds beside any authority.
- Never supply a replacement authority.
- Never state a date or a figure the draft did not contain; write [CHECK THE RECORD: the document] where a fact is missing.

The coach checks that what you paste back is your own work. The starter pasted back unchanged won't pass.

Do this

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Share what happened

Paste your five sections (trimmed) with the edge cases and threshold visible.