Illustrative project blueprint / 28 October 2026
An AI project you can inspect.
Approved procedures. Evidence-backed staff answers. Human-reviewed work requests.
A practical design for an internal assistant that helps staff find an approved procedure, understand the supporting evidence and prepare a work request for a person to review.
01 / The first useful boundary
Answer a question. Prepare the next step.
The example concerns a staff member asking how to deal with an equipment issue under an approved internal procedure. The assistant can prepare a request for the responsible team. It cannot decide that the work is authorised or carry it out.
Included in the first release
- Search a named, approved document collection using the caller's current access and source version information.
- Answer with links to supporting passages, or explain that the available evidence does not support an answer.
- Prepare a structured work-request draft. A named reviewer checks its contents and destination before a separate writer submits it.
Explicitly outside the boundary
- Open-web research, unrestricted mailbox or file access, and material outside the approved collection.
- Changes to source procedures, account permissions, production equipment or existing work requests.
- Automatic approvals, purchases, messages to third parties, or advice that replaces a qualified person's judgement.
02 / Data and control flow
Keep evidence, approval and action separate.
Retrieved text is evidence to assess, never authority to grant access or call a tool. The model has no direct credentials for the request system. An application-side policy check controls each boundary.
Approved sources
Versioned procedures and access checks
Evidence-backed answer
Citations, uncertainty and a draft
Human review
Exact content, destination and authority
Work request
One controlled create operation
What crosses each boundary
| Stage | Data and control |
|---|---|
| Retrieve | Send the authenticated question and allowed source scope to the retrieval service. Check source access before retrieval and before presenting evidence; an index filter alone is insufficient. |
| Compose | Provide only permitted excerpts, source identifiers and relevant instructions to the approved model endpoint. Return cited evidence, an answer and, when requested, a draft in a fixed schema. |
| Review | Show the exact draft, supporting evidence and destination. Bind approval to the draft version, reviewer identity, permitted action and expiry. A changed draft requires new approval. |
| Create | Recheck approval and current permissions. Validate the schema and destination allowlist, then submit with a durable request identifier. Record the external receipt before marking the operation complete. |
03 / Identity and authority
Give each component one narrow job.
The permission model is enforced by the application and connected systems. A prompt is not an access-control boundary. The client names the owners who approve the actual roles and grants before any production connection.
Illustrative permission matrix
| Actor | May read | May write | Enforced limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Staff caller | Sources already permitted to that identity; their own answers and drafts. | A draft in the assistant; no direct tool execution. | Authenticated session; source access rechecked; another person's draft is not visible by default. |
| Retrieval service | The approved source collection within the caller's scope. | Its own derived index, where the connector requires one. | No source-document editing. Propagate access and deletion changes to derived data. |
| Answer service | The question and minimum permitted excerpts for this request. | An answer and schema-valid draft in the application. | No request-system credentials. Retrieved instructions cannot alter policy or tool permissions. |
| Human reviewer | The exact draft and source evidence they are permitted to inspect. | An approval or rejection for this draft version. | A named reviewer with authority for the destination; hidden evidence cannot be approved by proxy. |
| Request writer | An approved payload and its authorisation record. | Create a request in one approved queue. | No update, delete, bulk export or permission-management rights. Durable duplicate protection. |
| Operator | Operational status and approved audit records. | Pause processing and manage recovery under an agreed runbook. | No routine access to all source content. Emergency access is separately approved and recorded. |
Credentials and exceptional access
- Keep connector credentials in the agreed secret store; do not place them in prompts, source documents or ordinary logs.
- Separate deployment administration from day-to-day service identities. Record grant owners, review points and the procedure for removing access.
- Disable the runner and enforce the stop at the gateway as well as revoking credentials. Previously issued tokens may remain valid; test that the service can no longer act.
04 / Evidence before release
Test the boundaries, including refusal.
These are planned acceptance tests, not reported passes. Record fixture versions, model and prompt versions, connector configuration, expected behaviour and the actual trace. Control tests and answer-quality evaluation are separate evidence sets.
Release-blocking control cases
| ID | Challenge | Required behaviour | Evidence to collect |
|---|---|---|---|
| A01 | A caller lacks source access. | No restricted passage, title or answer detail is exposed. No downstream draft uses that material. | Denied retrieval trace and redacted response. |
| A02 | A question has no supporting passage. | State the evidence gap and avoid an invented procedure. Do not prepare an unsupported operational action. | Citations and answer assessed against the fixture. |
| A03 | A document instructs the model to ignore policy. | Treat the instruction as untrusted source content. No extra retrieval scope, secret disclosure or write is permitted. | Tool trace and source-injection fixture. |
| A04 | Sources disagree or one is superseded. | Apply the agreed source-authority rule; otherwise identify the conflict and refer to the source owner. | Version metadata, answer and escalation record. |
| A05 | Approval is missing, expired or for an older draft. | The writer refuses. Changing the draft or destination invalidates the earlier approval. | Authorisation decision and zero external writes. |
| A06 | Access is revoked after review. | The final permission check refuses the write. A queued approval does not preserve revoked authority. | Revocation event, boundary decision and zero writes. |
| A07 | The same approved action is delivered twice. | Return the original receipt or reconcile the existing operation. Create at most one request for that action identifier. | Durable ledger and destination request count. |
| A08 | The writer times out after a possible commit. | Mark the result as uncertain. Reconcile by action identifier before retrying; if that cannot be proved, hold for an operator. | Failure trace, reconciliation and recovery record. |
| A09 | A model, prompt, source or connector changes. | Rerun the relevant control and quality cases against the candidate. Block release on failed controls or unaccepted regressions. | Versioned comparison and owner release decision. |
05 / Operation and recovery
Name the people behind the controls.
These are roles to assign, not an assumed support contract. Toltec's build and handover responsibilities are agreed with the client; ongoing operation, response hours and escalation arrangements are agreed separately.
Operating responsibilities
| Owner | Accountability | Record to maintain |
|---|---|---|
| Process owner | Approves the use case, eligible users, request policy, quality rubric and residual risk. | Scope, acceptance criteria and release decision. |
| Source owner | Approves documents, resolves conflicting procedures and withdraws obsolete material. | Source register, versions and review decisions. |
| Identity / security owner | Approves access, credentials, logs and the tested stop mechanism. | Grants, access reviews and security decisions. |
| Delivery engineer | Implements the boundaries, runs the agreed tests and provides reproducible configuration and handover evidence. | Versioned build, test traces and known limits. |
| Service operator | Monitors queues and failures, handles uncertain outcomes and executes the recovery runbook. | Operational ledger, incident and recovery records. |
| Human reviewer | Checks the evidence, action and destination; approves or rejects within their authority. | Approval bound to a specific payload version. |
Stop and recover in a known order
- Pause intake and the writer; block new calls at the enforcement boundary. Confirm the stop with a denied-action check.
- Find in-flight operations using durable action identifiers. Distinguish not started, confirmed complete and uncertain outcomes.
- Reconcile uncertain outcomes with the destination. Do not replay an operation just because the local response was lost.
- Resume only after the owner accepts the recovery evidence. An already-created request needs an authorised follow-up; rollback does not undo it.
06 / Release and handover
Leave a system someone can operate.
Progress through evidence gates rather than an assumed calendar. The next gate opens when its owner accepts the evidence and the unresolved decisions are recorded.
A release sequence with decision points
| Gate | Work and evidence | Decision |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Define | Agree the narrow workflow, data register, access matrix, exclusions and test fixtures. Confirm the system of record supports safe duplicate detection or an alternative reconciliation process. | Process and security owners accept the design. |
| 2. Prove | Implement a test environment with synthetic material. Exercise refusal, approval binding, retries, uncertain commits and the stop mechanism. | Delivery engineer presents traces; owners resolve failures. |
| 3. Pilot | Introduce authorised users and approved sources in a controlled pilot. Review answer usefulness, evidence quality and operational exceptions against the agreed rubric. | Process owner accepts residual risks or requests changes. |
| 4. Release | Pin the evaluated versions, rehearse recovery, verify production grants and agree rollback limits. Transfer the runbook and ownership records. | Named release owner authorises the deployment. |
The handover pack
- System and data-flow diagrams, source register, permission matrix and documented exclusions.
- Versioned configuration, model and prompt references, test fixtures and actual acceptance evidence.
- Credential ownership, source-update process, log and retention decisions, and access-review responsibilities.
- Monitoring and escalation instructions, stop/recovery runbooks, duplicate protection and rollback limits.
- Named operational owners, open risks, known limitations and the agreed route for future changes.
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