Nine Small Schemas Keep Project Records Consistent

Zero-Bureaucracy artifacts should be small enough that people will correct them and structured enough that AI can reason over them. “Setting It Up Takes an Afternoon and Five Commands” shows where each one lives in the Chief of Staff’s repository.

Decision#

ID:
Date:
Owner:
Decision:
Context:
Evidence considered:
Consequences:
Revisit when:
Related specs/issues/experiments:

Observation#

ID:
Date:
Source:
Observed behavior or statement:
Context:
Direct evidence/link:
Interpretation: [optional, clearly labeled]
Related hypothesis:

Hypothesis#

ID:
Hypothesis:
Owner:
Supporting evidence:
Contradictory evidence:
Confidence:
Experiment or next evidence:
Stopping condition:
Decision affected:

Experiment#

ID:
Question:
Hypothesis tested:
Method:
Owner:
Start:
Stop condition:
Evidence collected:
Result:
Decision changed:

Commitment#

ID:
Commitment:
Owner:
Source decision/spec:
Checkpoint:
Acceptance evidence:
Status:

Weekly plan#

Week:
Outcome 1:
  Why now:
  Owner:
  Source of intent:
  Done means:
  Acceptance/evidence:
Outcome 2:
...
Learning goal 1:
Work explicitly deferred:
Next review:

Meeting result#

Date:
Decisions:
Questions unresolved:
Observations/evidence:
Hypotheses:
Ideas not approved:
Actions and owners:
Acceptance criteria:
Specification changes:
Next checkpoint:
Ambiguities requiring confirmation:

Chief of Staff finding#

Severity:
Finding:
Why it matters:
Conflicting or missing sources:
Human decision required:
Suggested deadline/checkpoint:

Incident timeline#

Declared:
In command:
Checkpoint interval:
Contractual clocks running:
Stop condition:
Entries: [time, what changed, who, what the logs and commits confirm]
Customer updates sent:
Stop condition met:

These are not forms to fill because the forms exist. AI should generate them from existing work whenever possible. Humans should correct the consequential parts.