Keep the evidence and name the next need

Keep a short record you can follow

Use the work already saved this week. The Professor can help locate the relevant records and prepare a summary for you to check. You do not need a second copy of every source or a new collection project.

Keep these references together in your course progress note at work/course/staff/progress.md:

A reference should take you to the record, not merely say that it exists. Check that you can open the records you name. Leave not checked, missing, or unavailable beside anything you cannot verify.

Keep drafts and revisions distinguishable from the approved SOP. Your reflection is a course note; it does not automatically become approved business knowledge in Cairns.

To find files your agents saved this week that no record points to, ask Gigawatt or the Charter Steward to run the unlinked file check. It only lists them. Nothing is moved or deleted, and you decide whether each file belongs in your record.

Do this now: check your evidence record

Read the short record and correct anything that overstates what you did or approved. A short, honest record is more useful than a long success story.

Follow one change through to its result

Pick one condition or step in your approved SOP: the most interesting, not the easiest. Then name what the organization did with it that you didn’t do yourself. Find the evidence or decision behind it, then find where it changed the result of one of your test runs (the guided one in Module 3 or your own in this module).

In the fictional client-kickoff example, the chain might be:

• The reviewed evidence and human confirmation establish the signed-brief requirement.
• The approved SOP includes that condition before kickoff.
• A fresh readiness check retrieves that SOP and reports that a signature is not verified in the selected case records.

That is a synthetic example, not a claim about your work. Open your own records and see how far your chain holds.

Filing the SOP and running the job are things you did. They don’t count as results of using it. What happened because of them is what you are checking. A citation alone does not prove that the job followed the step correctly.

Open the result and look. If it didn’t change the way you said, keep both lines: what you claimed, and what you found. Mark anything you haven’t opened as not checked. Do not claim saved time or better performance without evidence for that comparison.

Do this now: record one checked connection

Name the SOP condition, the source or decision behind it, and the line in the result you inspected. Explain what this does and does not establish.

You are checking the work you kept, so you don't need to open Langfuse here. Carry forward any known recording gap alongside the work.

Say what you learned

Write a short reflection in your own words, with today’s date. The Professor asks these questions one at a time and doesn't suggest answers, because the point is what you noticed. Answer them the way you would explain the work to someone you trust:

1. What can your organization do now that you couldn’t do on your own?
2. Where didn’t you trust it, and what would have to be true for you to?
3. What did you think it was doing that it turned out not to be doing?
4. What job do you keep doing yourself that you haven’t handed over?

Use the SOP work to make your answers concrete. Include any uncertainty you left open rather than guessing.

Give the limitations the same care as the useful result. If the job failed to retrieve the SOP, that is what happened. If it retrieved the right version but applied it badly, that is a different problem. If it worked only after you supplied the missing answer, keep that intervention in the record.

Do this now: write your reflection

Use a specific moment from your guided or independent attempt. Keep your answer separate from any interpretation The Professor offers. You can disagree with its summary.

Write one sentence about what your organization still cannot do

Look at your answer to question 4. Grow it into one sentence about a recurring piece of work you still do yourself, from what starts it to what you hand over. Name what starts it, the main stages, what finishes it, and who receives the result. Usually it is the workstream you named in Module 1. If you chose a support process there, you can name a workstream from another part of your business instead, because support is the worked example in Week 3. The process you turned into an SOP is usually one stage of it. If your Module 1 notes have no workstream line, name the workstream now.

For example, a need might be: “When a client gets a result worth sharing, I still do it all myself: gathering the numbers, checking what the client has said publicly, writing the story in my voice and drafting the LinkedIn post, and the client approves the finished post before it goes out.” In that example, the SOP covered one stage, writing the story, and the other stages are untested.

A single check, such as confirming that one payment arrived, is one step. In Week 3 you build a team of about five agents, so Week 3 needs the whole piece of work that step sits inside.

That sentence describes useful work. It does not decide whether the answer is better knowledge, a different handoff, a tool, or a new agent.

No agent in the sentence. If you’re writing “I need an agent that…”, stop, and write what you need instead. The later design work needs your need, not your design.

Choose the need your evidence makes clearest. Do not invent a failure because this lesson asks for one. A next need may concern work outside the small task you tested; say plainly when that wider work has not been tried. Most of a workstream will be untested this week. Say which stage your SOP covered and mark the rest as untested.

Do this now: write your sentence

Read it back as if you were explaining the problem to a colleague. Add one reference to the result that exposed it, or identify it as an untested need.

Approve what carries into Week 3

Ask Chief to prepare a short handoff from your evidence record and your need sentence. Chief shows you its plan and waits for your go. The need stays in your words. The Professor checks your sentence against the evidence you saved and tells you if any part of it isn't supported there, but it doesn't rewrite the sentence for you or add a need of its own.

The handoff should preserve what you tried, what happened, what remains uncertain, and the question you want considered next. In Week 3, Chief decides who picks up the need. Nothing is designed or built in this lesson.

Read the proposed handoff. Correct any claim that goes beyond the evidence. Decide whether it accurately represents the need you want to carry forward. When the wording is right, say yes to it explicitly. Only after that yes does Chief append a dated Week 3 section to context/handoff.md, with your need in your words, naming the workstream, which stage your SOP covered and the paths to the evidence, and add one entry to context/decisions.md recording what you approved. Chief appends rather than rewrites, because that file may already hold your earlier goal. After your yes to the exact text, The Professor also appends your evidence record, your four reflection answers and your need sentence to your course progress note, work/course/staff/progress.md, so your course record is complete in one place.

Open context/handoff.md and check the references and the next question. If you stop before approving it, nothing is written to context/handoff.md or context/decisions.md. Have The Professor save the proposed wording and the decision still pending in your course progress note, work/course/staff/progress.md, so you can pick up there.

If you get stuck

Before you finish

You can find the selected sources, confirmed map, approved SOP, review, and use results. Use that record to explain these, in your own words, to someone who wasn’t there:

1. What you approved. Which sources you let in, which knowledge you accepted, and which SOP version you approved.
2. What stayed uncertain. A gap in the evidence, map, or SOP that you left open rather than guess.
3. Which evidence shaped the result. The line behind an answer and the records you opened to check it.
4. What your procedure did, and where you saw it used.
5. How you worked alone in this module's first lesson, Try your SOP independently.

Give the second and third the same care as the rest.

Keep your four reflection answers and one sentence about what your organization still can’t do. The saved handoff says what you approved for later consideration and what is still pending.

Words you now own

• Evidence record: references to the sources, decisions, and results you can inspect.
• Reflection: your own account of what happened and what you learned.
• The need, not the design: the work still needed, before choosing how to build it.
• Handoff: the evidence, need, and open question approved for later work.

Next: Lesson 3, look at your organization and scope one idea for Week 3.