Official skill · AI practice

Workflow discovery for an AI pilot

Maps one customer or team workflow, FDE style: shadowing questions, a swimlane of steps with time and pain, data, exceptions, where AI fits, and a pilot. Use it when you're about to sit with a team to find where AI can help.

AI skill

Have your AI map a workflow before you pilot AI on it

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14 days free · No card needed

Works in Claude, ChatGPT, and coding agents. On Team and Business, the official skill in your pod updates itself when we improve it.

When to use it

What you give it

What you get

Discovery notes with a swimlane table, data and exceptions, an AI-fit table, one success metric, and a pilot proposal.

How it works

  1. Bound the workflow
  2. Shadow first, ask during
  3. Map the current steps as a swimlane table
  4. List data in and out
  5. Collect the exceptions
  6. Mark where AI fits
  7. Set one success metric and a pilot

Example

What you give it

Shadowed Ravi (AP clerk at Corvel Foods) for an hour. Invoices arrive by email as PDFs (~120/week). Opening the email and saving the PDF takes him ~30 sec. He types supplier, amount, PO number into the ERP (about 4 min each); he calls it tedious and says typos slip in. The invoices carry supplier bank details. If no PO number, he emails the buyer (~2 min to write) and waits (~1 in 8 invoices, wait 1–2 days). Over $8k needs manager Leena's approval in the ERP. Some suppliers send scanned images, harder to read.

What you get back (the start of it)

Workflow discovery — supplier invoice entry, Corvel Foods AP

Trigger → end: invoice email received → invoice approved in ERP · Volume: ~120 per week · Observed: Ravi, 1 hour

Swimlane: current state

#ActorStepToolMin/itemPain
1AP clerkOpen email, download PDFEmail0.5none
2AP clerkType supplier, amount, PO number into ERPERP4boredom, typos
3AP clerkIf no PO: email buyer, waitEmail2 + 1–2 days waitwait
4Manager (Leena)If > $8,000: approveERP[check]wait

Data in and out

StepIn (source, format)OutSensitive?
2PDF or scanned imageERP invoice recordsupplier bank details: yes
3Invoice without POEmail to buyerno

The rest of this output, the full steps and the checks the AI runs before it answers are in your pod once you add the skill.

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Changelog

Sources

  1. Trading Margin for Moat: Why the Forward Deployed Engineer Is the Hottest Job in Startups - a16z (read 2026-11-04)
  2. Contextual Inquiry: Inspire Design by Observing and Interviewing Users in Their Context - NN/G (read 2026-11-04)
  3. Building effective AI agents - Anthropic (read 2026-11-04)
Use this skill in your AI