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Stephen OldfieldAI & transformation · operator & builder

Systems · AI transformation

Patterns for AI at work

Most of what I know about adopting AI I learned by running my own work through it, and most of that turned out to be operations, not software. These are the patterns I would bring to any organisation, in the order I would bring them.

Two brains, one gateTwo separate systems: a work brain on the left and a personal brain on the right. Between them is a single gate that only opens one way, from work to personal. It checks each item: is it marked shareable, and are its tripwires clean? Items that pass go through; items that fail bounce back to where they started. There is no path the other way.GENERIC PATTERN · THE SHAPE OF MY OWN SYSTEMWork brainfiles, drafts, meetingsPersonal brainlessons, patterns, the long recordthe gateshareable?tripwires clean?fails a check → back where it came fromno door the other way
two brains, one gate
Fig. 01 — Two brains, one gate. A generic pattern: the shape of my own system, not anyone else's.

What was failing

The usual failure is not that the tool is weak. It is that nobody wrote down what the tool was allowed to do before it started doing it. The automation arrives first, the rules arrive after the first surprise, and every rule after that is a patch.

The second failure is quieter. A system that falls back to an older source when the right one is missing still produces an answer, on time, in the right format. Nobody asks where it came from, because nothing looks broken.

What I built

Not a product — a short list of patterns, each one tested on my own second brain before I would recommend it to anyone else.

  • Guardrails before automation. For every job, three lists written first: what it may do on its own, what it may do only with review, and what it may never do. The last list is the one that matters.
  • Two brains, one gate. Work material and personal material live in separate systems. Anything that crosses goes one way only, through a gate that checks it before it moves. Nothing crosses by accident, because there is only one door.
  • Failures loud, successes silent. A job that worked takes one line. A job that failed takes the top of the screen. And "worked" means it used the right source, not just that it produced output on time.
  • A named human for every decision. The system drafts, files and proposes. Anything that leaves the building waits for a person whose name is on it.
  • One home per concept. One canonical place for each fact, and everything else links to it. Two copies of a rule is how a system ends up obeying the old one.
  • Verify after, where it is safe to. Not everything needs a gate in front of it. Low-risk work runs and is logged for review; high-risk work waits. Deciding which is which, in writing, is most of the design.

What changed

On my own desk: the filing stopped being my job, and the judgment calls got more of my attention rather than less. The surprises did not stop, but they started arriving as a failure I could see instead of an answer I trusted.

What you can inspect

The system these came from is written up in detail — the architecture, the command center that surfaces its failures, and the publishing gate that keeps this site honest.

What isn’t proven

These patterns were tested at the scale of one person and one household. An organisation adds things my desk never had: many owners, competing priorities, and people who did not choose the system. I expect most of the list to hold. I do not yet know which parts will need to change, and I will not pretend otherwise until I do.