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A one-page checklist for testing one AI workflow before handoff

A small team does not need a program to hand off an AI workflow. It needs one workflow, a few honest tests and a person who can run them without the builder in the room.

Here is the checklist I would use. The example is a hypothetical demo, not client work: an assistant that reads a shared support inbox and drafts replies for a person to review.

Pick one bounded workflow

Write one sentence that says what it does and what it does not do. "It drafts replies to support emails. It never sends them." If you cannot write that sentence, the workflow is not ready to hand off.

Run the checks

Keep the list short enough that someone will actually use it.

  1. Test with ordinary input. Run ten real-looking messages through it. Read every draft. Do not skim.
  2. Test with bad input. Send an empty message, a very long one and one that contains instructions aimed at the assistant. Note what it does.
  3. Check what it can reach. List every system, folder and account it touches. Remove anything the draft does not need. If it uses MCP, check which tools the server exposes and which ones this workflow actually calls.
  4. Confirm the human step. Try to make it send without approval. It should not be possible, not just discouraged.
  5. Look at the data path. Where do the email contents go while it works? Where are they stored afterward, and for how long?

Privacy still applies

A support inbox is not a regulated system, but it holds names, addresses and sometimes account details. Lower-risk does not mean no obligations. Decide what the assistant may see, what gets logged and who can read the logs.

Write the handoff

The person taking over needs four things on one page:

  • What the workflow does and does not do
  • What it can access, and who granted that access
  • How to pause it
  • Who to call when a draft looks wrong

Then ask that person to run the checks once, alone. Where they get stuck, the handoff is incomplete. Fix the page, not the person.

Keep the scope small

This is not a company-wide transformation. It is one workflow that one team can explain, pause and review. If it holds up, the same checklist can be reused on the next one. If it does not, you have learned that cheaply, before anyone depended on it.


I'm Jonathan Melton. I run FusionAL, focused on reviewing and integrating lower-risk internal AI workflows, one bounded workflow at a time.

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