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The workflow starts when a project grows beyond one conversation and approved decisions, file versions, or next steps become difficult to track. I begin by creating one active authority document. It is not a transcript of every discussion; it contains only the rules, definitions, methods, and structural decisions that currently control the project. Next, I label project files by status: active, working, superseded, or archived. I also state clearly which file is authoritative instead of expecting the AI to infer it from the filenames. As decisions are approved, I record them in the authority document or a change log. I include what was decided, why it was decided, what it affects, and whether it needs later review. This keeps the chat from becoming the only project record. For large deliverables, I divide the work into named stages. A spreadsheet project might move through architecture, data migration, calculations, validation, and publication. Each stage produces a separate file and has a clear completion check. When a conversation gets too long, I create a handoff prompt for the next chat. It includes: - the project goal; - the active authority files; - completed work; - approved decisions; - unresolved issues; - the next specific deliverable; - anything that should not be redesigned. I start the new conversation with that prompt and only the files needed for the next stage. Finally, I validate the output outside the chat. For Excel files, that means opening them in desktop Excel, checking formulas and errors, saving them, closing them, and reopening them. An AI-generated file is not finished until it passes that check. The core pattern is to record the authority, label the versions, log decisions, work in stages, create a clear handoff, and validate the result. Step-by-step: 1. I create one active authority document containing the project’s current rules, definitions, methods, and structural decisions. 2. I label each project file as active, working, superseded, or archived, and identify the authoritative file. 3. I record approved decisions in the authority document or a change log, including the decision, rationale, effects, and any need for later review. 4. I divide large deliverables into named stages, with a separate file and clear completion check for each stage. 5. I create a handoff prompt when a conversation becomes too long, covering the project goal, authority files, completed work, approved decisions, unresolved issues, next deliverable, and anything that should not be redesigned. 6. I begin the next conversation with the handoff prompt and only the files needed for that stage. 7. I validate the final output outside the chat—for Excel files, by opening them in desktop Excel, checking formulas and errors, saving, closing, and reopening them.

Ten days ago, I posted about keeping a `HANDOFF.md` so an AI film project doesn't lose the decisions it has already made. This is the other half, and it turned out to be the expensive one: the decisions that haven't been made yet. Credit where it belongs: Tony Ojeda posted a spec-generator agent that sits between an idea and implementation. The rule I borrowed is his: the agent inspects what already exists before proposing anything. I applied it to film production instead of code. I pointed an agent at my production documents for a short film I hadn't started generating and asked it to identify what was still undecided, what each item affected, and what would break if it were decided late. It came back with ten open decisions. One of them was worth the whole exercise. My environment description is locked verbatim across all 40 shots so the world stays identical. The film is called *The Thaw*. Whether the ice visibly melts during the film is written down nowhere. If I decide that in week three, all 40 keyframes get regenerated at once. I would have found out around shot 12. The counterintuitive part is who writes the list: not me. Asking the person who already has the whole film in their head what's missing gets you very little, because they have all of it—and that's exactly why they can't see the hole. The list has to come from something that only knows what's written down. Step-by-step: 1. I put the open questions in section 0 of the handoff, above everything else, so it's the first thing read and the first thing emptied. 2. I have the agent write that list, not me. It reads every existing document for the project and returns only what it cannot know from them. 3. I have it return three things for each item: what's undecided, which shots it affects, and what breaks if it's decided late. The third column sets the priority. 4. I have it sort by what costs the most to change afterward, not by what's easiest to answer. 5. I keep one hard rule: while an open question affects a shot, that shot doesn't get generated. The question gets decided, or deferred in writing with the cost of being wrong stated. 6. Every answered item leaves section 0 through one of two doors: into the closed canon or into the rejected list. Nothing is simply deleted. 7. I ask specifically about the things that go missing every time: the rule of the world; the physical scale of anything impossible, such as whether the character can touch or climb it; any object appearing in more than one shot; screen direction; how it ends; who speaks and in what voice; and the delivery format. 8. When it finds nothing real, it says so. A list padded to look thorough is worse than an empty one. The version I'd used for a year ran at the end of a session and recorded what got decided. Running it at the start, focused on what hasn't been decided, is the same document pointed the other way—and it's the direction that saves money.