An intake to implementation framework for AI projects

Is your AI project ready to build?

Two gaps sit between the idea and the build.

Check your project Get the executive PDF worksheet

Gap 1

The communication gap

Leadership speaks the language of ROI, risk, bottlenecks and efficiency. Engineering speaks the language of vector databases, JSON schemas and API rate limits. Without a shared translation, ambiguity reigns and AI projects stall or get over-engineered, producing messy deployments and confusion.

Gap 2

The source-of-truth gap

Your best people work from experience, nuance and habits nobody wrote down. That tribal knowledge makes a process hard to scale, and impossible for an AI to follow without guessing, which leads to sloppy information outputs or over-leveraged token use.

The GOALPOSTS framework

Start with clarity. Finish with impact.

Nine stages, split by who owns them. Leadership defines the first four. Engineering builds the next four. Both answer for the last.

Leadership owns G.O.A.L.

Engineering owns P.O.S.T.

Answer one question for each letter. Every “no” marks a decision the AI would otherwise make for you by guessing.

Scoring

7–9 · ready for scoping
4–6 · close, with gaps
0–3 · start with the worksheet

Example answers · click to change

5 / 9

G

Can you name the one metric this should improve?

O

Do you know the exact manual step causing the delay?

A

Is every document it needs somewhere you can hand over?

L

Have you written down what it must never do?

P

Could you list the steps in order on one page?

O

Do you know the exact format of the deliverable?

S

Do you know who approves it before it acts?

T

Can you name the event that starts it?

S

Will you know in 30 days whether it worked?

Start with the worksheet

Most of the decisions are still open.

Get my analysis

The Temp Worker Test

Could a temp produce the right answer without asking you a question?

Give a temporary worker your exact assets and your exact rules. If they'd need company history or gut instinct to finish, your project isn't ready. The fix is to replace every adjective with a rule someone could check.

Yes

Ready for AI development.

No

Tribal knowledge is still in the spec. Rewrite the Logic.

Vague

Buildable

Flag urgent emails

Flag emails containing “Cancellation”

Expedite large orders

If units_ordered > 500, set status to Expedited

Use judgement on pricing

Never guess a missing price

Skip the junk

Ignore marketing emails; route unknown domains to audit

Two ways forward

Get the analysis, or bring us in.

Executive analysis worksheet

Describe the workflow you want to automate. We'll return a critical analysis against all nine GOALPOSTS, with the gaps marked.

Consulting

GOALPOSTS scoping engagement

Joel and Will work through the framework with your leadership and engineering leads, then hand back a build plan.

Leadership working session on G.O.A.L.
Temp Worker review of your rules
P.O.S.T. build plan for your engineers
Success metrics agreed by both sides

[PRICE / ENGAGEMENT LENGTH]