Separate approval from effectivity, show what changed between two revisions in the steps, not the formatting, and mark who is still on the one before — approval stays with a named process owner.
A procedure is written from the way the work is actually run, and each step keeps the source it came from.
02
A revision is drafted, and what moved in the steps is shown apart from what moved in the formatting.
Reason
03
A step changes, and the older wording and the newer one are held side by side rather than overwritten.
04
A revision is approved, and the day it takes effect is carried as its own date, not the day of approval.
05
A procedure reaches one site before another, and each site is marked with the revision it is running.
Decide
06
A person is trained, and the acknowledgement is tied to the revision number that person was shown.
07
A superseded copy is still on a wall or in a drawer, and it is listed for withdrawal by place.
Out
08
A procedure describes a system that has since been replaced, and that is raised as a finding.
09
Execute write actions only inside the approval boundaries agreed during implementation.
→Product statement
Drafting, diffing, versioning and chasing belong to the agent. Approval belongs to a named process owner, who decides that a step is safe and correct.
Example workflow
One procedure, draft to effective
AgentHuman
1Change request receivedA process owner request, a review finding, a line change or a procedure falling due
2Current text assembledThe revision now in force, the steps as they are run, the records the procedure touches and the sites it covers
3Revision draftedThe redrafted steps, the diff against the live revision, the training impact and confidence
4Controls appliedStep-level diff checks, numbering and format rules, training-impact checks and drafting confidence
No human action required
Stages 1 to 4 run unaided, and nothing takes effect at any of them — the agent is drafting, and the owner lane opens at the approval gate.
5DecisionSplits at the approval gate
Steps unchanged
Goes to the named process owner to approve.
Anything that moves a step
Adds a subject-matter read first.
Owner approval
The revision is held with its diff, its training impact and the sites it would reach.
Approve · Amend · Send to subject-matter review
Approved — by the named process owner▼
6Document and training records updatedOnly where write access and records policy allow it
7Outcome evaluatedEffective dates met, acknowledgements returned, owner amendments and what review found
Amendments
Each owner amendment is counted in the evaluation.
What should not run autonomously
Human approval stays in control
Outside the boundary — human approval required8 items
Approving a procedure for use.
Setting the day a revision takes effect.
Deciding that a step is safe and correct.
Signing off training for a role.
Automation boundaryAgent acts unaided
✓Draft the procedure from how the work is run.
✓Flag a revision approved but never made effective.
✓Show what changed in the steps, not in the numbering or layout.
✓Track which revision each site is running, and who acknowledged it.
Nothing takes effect except by a named process owner, inside the agreed boundaries.
Judging whether a procedure is still fit.
Telling a reviewer a procedure was followed.
Retiring a procedure that is still in use.
Changes to numbering, approval or training rules.
Example output
One revision, annotated
This serves an operations team who may be asked years later which revision a person was working to; below is one revision exactly as the agent leaves it.
Procedure output · single revisionIllustrative example
Procedure
Recorded as
Revision
Effective from
Confidence
Held for
Line changeover, packing station
Two steps changed, wording only elsewhere
Revision five, drafted
Not yet set
Held unapproved
The named process owner
As receivedBuilt from the revision in force and the way the step is run today, and it asserts nothing past them.
What the record holdsRevision in forceStep-level diffTraining list
Why no approval hereDeciding a step is safe is a judgement the process owner makes.
ActionApproveAmendSend to subject-matter review
What the score decidesBelow the threshold a revision picks up a subject-matter read before the owner sees it.
Value
Where AI adds value
The same four claims, placed at the point in the workflow where each one applies.
Where the value landsValue 01 – 04
Every procedureFrom the store it is kept in
03Sources
Where the source is used
The agent does not vouch for a step, only for what the revision in force says, what a draft would change and who has acknowledged which version.
01Approved path
A procedure people actually run
The sheet at the bench, the intranet page and the file in the shared drive can each be called current and still disagree, with nobody having lied.
02Human review
What was checked, and not found
No statute governs the standard operating procedures of an ordinary company, and none was found for this one, so what binds here is the authoring and approval rules the company wrote for itself and applies.
04Build an evidence trail
The procedure, the version people were trained on and the author who issued it stay together.
Integrations
Typical integrations
Five system groups connect to the same agent. Which of them are in scope is decided in discovery.
A site-level effectivity figure can read clean while most of the superseded copies sit in a few kinds of procedure. Nestack reports the stale-revision rate by procedure group, not only in total.
Slice performance — reported separately, not only in aggregateIllustrative example
Slice
Failure rate
Lift
Lift vs. threshold
Status
Multi-site procedures
8.5%
3.7×
Review
Recently replaced systems
6.1%
2.7×
Review
Translated procedures
3.8%
1.7×
Watch
Stable back-office procedures
2.0%
0.9×
Normal
Bar: stale-revision-rate lift vs. back-office baseline · scale 0–4.0× · tick marks the 2.0× review threshold2 of 4 slices over threshold
Evidence-linked improvement
What a superseded sheet costs
A cycle ends when the procedure trained on a dead version is a standing case. That suite is what the next issue published is measured against.
Improvement cycle · five stagesSwitchback — the path turns at Improve and returns at Learn
01Detect
Stale-revision rate rises across multi-site procedures.
02Diagnose
The laminated sheet at the bench that was superseded two revisions ago is worked backwards until one cause is left standing.
03Improve
Every change ships numbered, and the procedures behind it ride along.
04Verify
One procedure case still failing is enough to hold the release back.
05Learn
It is kept for good, and the authoring rules are amended in the same commit.
Learn → DetectThe return edge. The next issue is measured against a suite one case longer.
Typical build scope
Twelve workstreams across six weeks
The build scope read against the delivery timeline. Week structure follows the six-week plan — discovery, sources, drafting workflow, evaluation, integration, then production validation and handover.
WorkstreamWeek 1Week 2Week 3Week 4Week 5Week 6
01Procedure-inventory and automation-boundary work.
02Document and training-record sources.
03Procedure-to-owner and training-record mapping.
04Procedure and revision ingestion.
05Diff, effectivity and training binding.
06Confidence scoring and review routing.
07Owner approval workflow.
08Document-system integration.
09Procedure and effectivity cases.
10Guardrails and approval controls.
11Procedure-trail instrumentation.
12Deployment, documentation and Agent Care handover.
12 workstreams · 6 weeks · bar shows the weeks a workstream is active — several run in parallelFinal scope and sequence confirmed in discovery
Engagement tiers
What each tier includes
Rows are the capabilities named in each tier's scope. Higher tiers include everything below them.
Capability✓ in scope · — not at this tierPilotOne site, one procedure setProductionProduction document workflowAdvancedMultiple sites / languages
Introduced at Pilot
Drafting to your procedure format✓✓✓
Named owner approval✓✓✓
Procedure-inventory baseline✓✓✓
Introduced at Production
Reporting by procedure owner—✓✓
Owner review workflow in your systems—✓✓
Approved write-back—✓✓
Document-management integration—✓✓
Introduced at Advanced
Multi-language procedure sets——✓
Multi-stage approval chains——✓
Large procedure libraries——✓
Multi-site effectivity controls——✓
Build priceFrom $5,000From $8,000Custom quote
Final build priceConfirmed after discovery based on integrations, workflow complexity, procedure volume, approval controls and deployment requirements.
Separate from buildBuild pricing is separate from recurring Agent Care, which covers managed monitoring, evaluations, incidents and verified improvements after launch.
What we need from you
What you bring, and what we build with it
Each input maps to a piece of build scope and a week in the delivery timeline.
You bringWe build with it
01Your live procedures and the owner each one answers to→Procedure capture and revision versioningWeek 1
02Representative procedures and their training records→Source binding, diff logic and the drafting baselineWeek 2
03Your approval route and the roles it names→Procedure mapping, owner binding and the automation boundaryWeek 1
04Access to relevant APIs, feeds or exports→Document and training-system assessment, then integration setupWeek 2
05Procedures you would not want audited→Effectivity cases and failure-mode testingWeek 4
06What no procedure record may establish→Confidence scoring, review routing, guardrails and approval controlsWeek 3
07A named process owner who approves the revision→Release to the process owner, then pilot and production validationWeeks 5–6
Nothing else is requiredDeployment, documentation and Agent Care handover are ours.
Delivery timeline
Four phases across six weeks
The bands below are measured, not spaced for looks; week five carries two phases because it does.
PhaseW1W2W3W4W5W6
DiscoveryW1
BuildW2 – W3
EvaluateW4 – W5
Pilot & LaunchW5 – W6
Week focusW1Procedure discovery, owner mapping and the automation boundaryW2Document and training integration and the procedure baselineW3Drafting, diff logic and effectivity controlsW4Evaluation suite, effectivity cases and failure-mode testingW5Document-system integration, pilot procedures and targeted correctionsW6One revision cycle run under the process owner, then Agent Care handover
Reading the bandA band sits on the weeks its own work is named for and nowhere else; week five genuinely carries two.
At the end of W6When the procedure record validates, Agent Care takes the agent on.
DurationSix-week plan shown · typical delivery 4–6 weeks depending on scope confirmed in discovery.
Next step · Operations AI agent
Build an SOP agent around the revision your floor is actually running.
Show us one procedure that lives in more than one place and the day each copy was last revised. If the sheet at the bench is not what the document store calls current, then the floor is running a revision nobody approved. No statute governs this; the rules you wrote do.
