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AI Foundations 02 · the judgment workbench

How do I decide whether an AI answer is good enough?

Define what a useful result looks like, inspect the draft against its sources and decide what to keep, edit or redo. Begin with work you understand, and involve another source or reviewer when a claim exceeds your knowledge.

Ryan Wanner · recorded course lesson · February 2026

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Six ways to think about the work

21:38 recorded lesson · YouTube and captions

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The historical 80/20 language illustrates responsibilities; it does not promise an 80% time saving. Judge the actual result and the full effort needed to produce it.

Can you catch the three unsupported claims?

Use the same source record for every decision. This practice is fictional and deliberately includes a flawed draft.

Fictional source record

Four visitors. Two requested floor plans. One asked for HOA documents. No offers recorded.

Your criteria: support every factual claim, retain unknowns and ask one useful next question.

Inspect the intentionally flawed draft

We saw strong demand today.
Offers are expected soon.
The HOA is approved.
Copy a revision request
Revise this intentionally flawed seller update using only the fictional source notes. Return the corrected update and a keep/change/remove explanation. Do not predict offers or claim approval.

SOURCE NOTES
Four visitors. Two requested floor plans. One asked for HOA documents. No offers recorded.

FLAWED DRAFT
We saw strong demand today. Offers are expected soon, and the HOA is approved.

CHECKS
Every claim supported; unknowns visible; one useful next question; under 100 words; unsent draft.

Make the review repeatable

  1. Write the win state

    Name the recipient, purpose and three observable criteria. A factual seller update is a useful output; a promise of future offers is not a criterion this draft can establish.

  2. Name who can verify what

    Identify facts you can confirm from the notes and questions requiring documents or another person. Do not guess about HOA approval or legal status.

  3. Inspect the flawed draft

    Compare each sentence with the supplied showing record. Find the claims of strong demand, expected offers and HOA approval. None is supported by these notes.

  4. Choose keep, edit or redo

    Make one decision and explain the defect it addresses. A specific revision instruction is more useful than asking the model to make everything better.

  5. Compare the revised result

    Use the same source notes and criteria. Keep accurate information, remove invented claims and ask the useful unresolved question.

  6. Retain the review checklist

    Save the successful criteria and one lesson from the comparison. Stop when they pass; repeated prompting is not an achievement by itself.

Three decisions in the recording

what's the win state?
3:27 · Decide what success means before asking for a draft.
keep, edit, redo
5:53 · Make a decision about the actual output.
I would build my strengths first.
10:40 · Begin where you have the knowledge to assess the work.

Judging by confident language

Check the source evidence before the polish.

Treating 80/20 as a measured saving

The recording uses a division-of-work illustration; it does not measure your time savings.

Iterating without a criterion

Obtain a missing fact instead of repeatedly rewriting an unsupported sentence.

Keep a record of your decision

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Download the practice, answer key and review log
Read the complete workbench and answer key
# Showing-update judgment workbench

Current companion to AI Foundations 02 · November 8, 2026. Fictional teaching case.

## Source record
Four visitors. Two requested floor plans. One asked about HOA documents. No offers recorded.

## Intentionally flawed draft
We saw strong demand today. Offers are expected soon, and the HOA is approved.

## Your decision
Win-state criteria:
Who can verify each fact:
Keep / edit / redo:
Reason:
Revision 1:
Result against the same criteria:
Optional revision 2, only if needed:

## Answer key
Reject strong demand as an unsupported interpretation. Remove offers expected: none were recorded. Remove HOA approved: the notes only record a document request.

One defensible revision: Four visitors attended. Two requested floor plans and one asked for HOA documents. No offers are recorded in these notes. Can we confirm the current HOA documents are available for that request?

Save the review rule, not a fictional outcome. No message was sent.

Questions about judging the result

Editorial answers for practicing this lesson.

Do I have to memorize six models?

No. Write the desired result, inspect one draft and decide what to change.

Why start with work I know?

You need a credible way to judge whether the output is correct and useful.

How many revisions should I run?

Enough to meet the stated criteria. If a fact is absent, get the fact rather than polish the guess.

Does 80/20 promise an 80% time saving?

No. It is an illustration of responsibilities, not a measured or guaranteed outcome.

What if I cannot judge a technical claim?

Mark it unresolved and use the appropriate source or qualified reviewer.

Selected teaching passages

Selected caption excerpts from the historical recording. These are deliberately non-contiguous passages, not the full transcript. Current practice and corrections are written separately above; the original recording is unchanged.

3:27 · Define the win

what's the win state? What are you looking for exactly?

5:50 · Keep, edit or redo

So again, you read the output, you orient to it, you decide keep, edit, redo, and then you act. So you send it or iterate it, and then you you kind of execute that plan.

10:40 · Start with your strengths

If it were me, I would build my strengths first. And the reason for that is one, I understand the process a lot better. And two, I'm learning AI, right? And so if I understand the process really well, I don't have to learn that process. I have to learn how AI works within that process.

17:37 · Choose work you understand

So kind of your action plan here is write down your circle of competence. What are the three areas that you know really well? What are the processes that you have that are working effectively? What are the things that potentially you might want to change?

Choose the next part of your workflow

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Judgment in the weekly work

Apply your review criteria to a recurring task.

The exercise makes review concrete. The Agent Constraint Accelerator is a next step to consider when you want help applying that judgment to your own operating constraint.