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Practical AI Program PlaybookNicholas Vidal

Sheet 03

Intake workspace

One front door. Without one, requests arrive through whoever the requester happens to know, the same question gets three different answers, and the program finds out about the work that matters least while the work that matters most happens quietly. This form is the alternative, and it runs.

What intake is for

Make the path obvious

A person with an idea should not have to know who to ask. One form, published timelines, and an answer that arrives whether or not the answer is yes.

Ask the questions once

Security, Risk, and Privacy need mostly the same eight facts. Collecting them at the front means a reviewer’s first act is reviewing rather than chasing.

Give the reasoning back

A requester who is told their pathway and the specific answers that set it can argue with the model. A requester told only “this needs review” learns to route around it.

Who owns this stage
Requester, supported by the AI Program Manager
What the program does here
Keeps the form short, answers questions before submission, and returns incomplete requests with specific questions rather than a rejection.
Typical duration
Same week

Demonstration Mode

This form works. It validates, classifies your request with the published triage model, and keeps the record — in your own browser only. Nothing is sent anywhere, and no one receives it.

Submit a request

Fifteen fields. The first four are about the problem, not the tool, which is deliberate — most requests that arrive tool-first turn out to be describing a different problem than the one they can name.

The problem

One line a stranger could understand.

The team that owns the work, not the team that will build it.

What is going wrong today, who it affects, and roughly how often. Describe the problem without naming a tool.

What you want it to do. “No tool identified yet” is a valid answer and a perfectly good place to start.

Users and data

Roles and roughly how many.

Classify by the most sensitive item in scope, not the typical one.

Everything the tool would see, including anything incidental — attachments, images, or material pasted in by habit.

Risk screening

These eight answers are the only inputs to the pathway assignment. Nothing else on this form changes the result, and there is no score behind them.

What is actually planned, not what would be ideal.

An approval covers a specific tool doing a specific thing with specific data.

Who would use it if this proceeds, not the pilot group.

Check every statement that is true

Anything that leaves the firm, including a draft sent to a client.

Hiring, evaluation, promotion, discipline, or comparable determinations.

Personal data about identifiable people, or data under a specific obligation.

Posting, sending, filing, or updating a system of record without a person doing it.

Value and ownership

The person accountable for the outcome. If nobody will own it, it does not start.

When you need it, and what drives that date.

What improves, for whom, and by roughly how much. An estimate is fine; a number nobody could ever check is not.

One per line. These become the pilot’s measures, so write the ones you would be willing to be judged on.

One per line. Naming a risk here does not slow the request down — an unnamed risk found during review does.

Demonstration records

Kept in your browser only. Refresh the page and they are still here; clear them and they are gone for good.

Loading your saved records…

What happens after submission

Triage assigns the pathway; it does not approve anything. From there the request follows the published expectations for its pathway, and the people with the authority to approve make the decision in a forum with a date on it.