What about the parts of a stay-human workflow that are process?

The assembling and reconciling around a human decision can move while the decision does not. The gate is where the two meet: the agent brings the package and the person makes the call.

How do we tell the two cases apart for our own list?

That is what the audit sorts: which workflows, which tier, in what order, and one of its outcomes is a list of what to leave alone. Nothing on the list is committed to moving by being looked at.

The pressure to automate everything on the list does not know which items should stay put

Today

One list, one pressure, no way to sort it

Everything on your process list is under pressure to be automated, and the pressure does not distinguish between items.
A process resists a handoff for one of two reasons: it is not ready, which preparation fixes, or it should not move, which is a property of the work.
Confusing the two wastes preparation on work that was never going to move, or moves work that should never have been on the list.

With agents

Named categories for what stays with a person

The list gets shorter for a reason you can state.
Preparation goes only where it can work.
The people doing stay-human work keep doing it on purpose.

The sorting rule and the stay-human categories

The sorting rule comes first, then the categories of work that stay with a person, each with the mechanism that makes it a property of the work.

Not ready and should not are different findings

Not-ready work fails a readiness check and is fixable: rules get written, inputs get normalized. Should-not work has a property no preparation changes. The readiness checklist owns the first finding; this entry owns the second.

Decisions that cannot be written down as rules

If the decision cannot be stated in sentences a second person could apply, the agent has nothing to execute and would be guessing.

Work whose value is a person's accountability or relationship

The output is the person standing behind it: the call a client expects from you, the sign-off that carries your name. An agent producing the same words removes what is being paid for.

Irreversible actions with a wide blast radius

When the worst realistic mistake costs more than a gate can catch, the action itself stays with a person rather than sitting behind a gate. Some mistakes are only visible afterwards.

Work with no owner to hold the gate

Every agent-run workflow needs a named person at its consequential step. If nobody will own that step, the workflow does not run.

Work the log cannot cover

What leaves no record cannot be verified, and unverifiable work does not run unattended.

Human gate

For everything that does move, the consequential step stays with a named person for sign-off; the approval gates entry defines the gate and How It Works describes its enforcement. That gate is the minimum human presence in any workflow; the categories above are the cases where the minimum is the whole job.

Results

What changes when stay-human is a finding

A shorter list, with reasons

Each removed item is removed by a named category rather than by discomfort.

Preparation only where it works

Not-ready work gets a scoped task with an owner; should-not work gets left alone.

Stay-human work kept on purpose

The decision is recorded with its category, so it is not relitigated every quarter.

Where this fits

Concept

This entry is the boundary the readiness checklist points at from the other side: readiness says what a process needs before an agent can run it, and this entry says which work stays with a person even when it would pass. How It Works is the way up from here, and it states what will not be deployed. The judgement here does not expire: work that belongs to a person belongs to a person.

How It Works

Questions, answered

For the categories here, yes, because each is a property of the work rather than of its current state. The not-ready case is different: it is a finding of the readiness checklist and preparation fixes it. A should-not finding does not mean "not yet."

AI Opportunity Audit

Decide what stays with a person

Bring the list you are being pressed to automate and sort it into what moves, what waits, and what stays with a person.

Book an audit