Workflow example · Document Review & Approval
Who reviewed this document: people, or only AI agents?
An AI agent drafted it. Other AI agents reviewed it. The team sent the result to you for approval. But you cannot see who checked the facts, which feedback a person considered, what remains unresolved, or who stands behind the recommendation.
- An AI agent drafts itIts owner is not asked
- A second AI agent reviews itIts owner is not asked
- It lands on your deskFor a signature
Why review effort matters
40%of U.S. desk workers surveyed encountered AI-generated work that shifted interpretation and clean-up to a colleague in a single month. Each incident took nearly two hours to resolve.
Axios · BetterUp Labs + Stanford Social Media Lab · 1,150 U.S. desk workers · 2025Review effort
Keep unresolved comments with the decision.
If sources, comments, and approvals live in separate threads, reviewers must reconstruct what was checked. Keep the reviewed version, checks, objections, and decision together.
Before changing the workflow, record review cycles per document, time spent checking and correcting, and approvals that need to be revisited. Use that baseline to judge the pilot.
The workflow
From draft to a recorded approval.
People set the scope and resolve disagreements. AI agents collect reviews and assemble the record; an authorized person approves or returns the work.
- A person: Sets scope
- An AI agent: Collects reviews
- A person: Resolves disagreements
- An AI agent: Assembles evidence
- A named person decides: Approves or returns
Explore all 8 workflow stages
Fix the question and the baseline
People carry this
The decision owner states the goal, the source document, the question to be decided, what counts as done, and the deadline. That exact version becomes the baseline everything after it refers to.
Assign roles and access
People carry this
Decision owner, document editor and reviewer are assigned as separate roles with separate rights. Role, participant type and access permission are three different things and are recorded separately.
Collect independent comments
People and AI agents together
Reviewers and their personal AI assistants examine one named version. Every submitted comment stays anchored to specific text and owned by the named reviewer, whether the first draft came from the person or their AI assistant. Independent first: comments are collected before they are reconciled, so agreement is not manufactured by whoever commented first.
Merge the register, revise the document
People and AI agents together
Duplicates merge in a way that keeps disagreement visible, and the editor issues a new version. Every comment ends in a stated outcome: integrated, not integrated with a reason, superseded, or needs a decision.
Send the question a person must answer
People and AI agents together
Only questions that sources and rules cannot settle reach a human — with the exact question, the options, the consequences, the grounds, where the parties disagree, what remains uncertain, and the one action required.
Assemble the approval package
AI agents carry this
For each comment the reader can open the original passage, the change made, or the reason it was declined. The package travels with the version, not separately from it.
Approve one specific version
People carry this
The decision owner receives the document together with every unresolved comment, and approves, rejects, or returns it for revision — explicitly, per comment. Agreement between AI agents is not approval, and neither is no reply.
Close the cycle
People and AI agents together
The outcome carries the actions, the people responsible, and the conditions that start them. Anyone entitled to can open the history of any significant change or decision afterwards.
Compare the review work
| Problem | What a person does today | What the workflow change does |
|---|---|---|
| Several versions in circulation | Compare files by hand. | One frozen version, with an ID. |
| Who can decide is unclear | Find out too late. | Owner, role and rights shown separately. |
| A comment gets lost | Hunt through old email. | Every comment kept, with its outcome. |
| “Addressed”, nothing to show | Re-read the whole document. | The change, or a reasoned refusal. |
| A dispute with no owner | Hold the meeting again. | A named person gets the question and the options. |
| An edit after approval | Work out which version was accepted. | A new version needs a new review. |
The working result
What you end up holding.
One approved version that cannot silently change. A comment register where every comment, from a person or an AI agent, has a stated outcome. A history of who proposed, changed, released, decided and approved, naming each AI agent and the person who owns it.
A bounded first case
Bring us this workflow.
Twenty minutes, one recurring workflow, and an honest answer about whether a bounded first case is worth running. If it is not, we will say so.