AI Trust Rules + 30/60/90
Claude drafts. A human approves. Nothing reaches a customer without a named person clicking send. The rules that keep that true, plus the plan that keeps it running past week three.
The full doc and the 30/60/90 on this page plus a printable PDF, and an occasional AI email from me. One-click unsubscribe.
Justin McKelvey
15 yrs shipping software ยท 50+ products
Why a real system needs rules
The failure mode of AI in a small business isn't "the AI was dumb." It's "the AI was confident, nobody checked, and a customer saw it."
Every horror story you've read, the chatbot that invented a refund policy, the airline that got sued over an answer its bot made up, happened because the AI had a direct line to a customer with no human in between. The Trust Rules exist so that never happens in your business or on your team.
And if someone asks whether AI wrote something, the honest answer is the safe one: "AI drafted it, I read every word, and I sent it."
The eight rules
- 01 Claude never sends
- 02 Claude never spends
- 03 Claude never signs
- 04 Claude never deletes
- 05 Claude never decides about a person
- 06 Internal-only automation is allowed
- 07 Financial data is read-only
- 08 When unsure, Claude asks
The template spells out each one, plus where customer and team data can go, what to do when Claude is wrong, and a named approver for every skill.
Plus your 30/60/90
The businesses that fail treat this as a project with an end date. The ones that win treat it as infrastructure with a maintenance schedule. The 30/60/90 takes four minutes to fill in, and it's the difference between having read something useful and having started something.
Questions
What are AI Trust Rules?
One sentence and its corollaries: Claude drafts, a human approves, and nothing reaches a customer, prospect, or vendor without a named human reading it and clicking send. The doc sits at the bottom of your Business Brain so Claude reads it every time.
Can anything run without a human approving it?
Yes, internal-only automation. Reports posted to an internal channel with no outside members can run unattended. If a customer could ever see it, it goes through a human first.
Why name approvers instead of a team?
Because the thing that kills more of these projects than anything else is the approver quietly stopping around week three. Nothing announces it; the drafts keep coming and the review becomes "looks fine." A named person per skill, plus named vacation cover, is what keeps the review real. "We'll all keep an eye on it" is the sentence that comes right before that failure.
What is the 30/60/90 plan for?
It turns a setup weekend into something that's still running in month four. Day 30 is one workflow with a named approver, a weekly review, a success sentence, and a decision date. Day 60 is connectors, skills, and the Trust Rules in place. Day 90 is your pack, two before-and-after measures, and the question: what do you do less of now?
From The Shop
This is Lesson 8 of The Shop
The Shop is my self-paced course on putting Claude to work in the business or team you run. The first seven lessons build what these rules protect: the Business Brain, your offers, a workflow run for a week, connectors, skills, and the pack that fits how you make money. Lesson 1 is free, no sign-in.
See the whole course