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Bruno Ashford @brunoashfordSubscribeModule 9 · Lesson 9.1 · 11 min
Documenting Processes With AI
Turn the way your business really does a task into a written SOP, then into a skill Claude Code can run the same way every time.
Use ← → to move. The marker highlights text and the pencil draws on the slide; navigation locks while you annotate. Undo removes the last mark, Esc exits.
1Pick one process that repeats and hurts
Choose something you or your team do at least weekly, that follows roughly the same steps and that costs more than an hour. Good first candidates are month-end close, supplier ordering, payroll prep or the weekly numbers email. Avoid anything that is still changing every month.
2Brain-dump the process and let Claude interview you
Open Claude Code in your business folder and describe the process in your own words, messy is fine. Ask Claude to interview you one question at a time until it understands the triggers, inputs, decisions, exceptions and the definition of done.
I want to document how we do our month-end close. Here is my rough version: we export the bank CSV, match it against invoices in the invoices folder, chase anything unpaid over 30 days, then send the numbers to our accountant. Interview me one question at a time until you understand the trigger, the inputs, every decision point, the exceptions and what done looks like. Do not write anything yet.3Generate the SOP from the template
Once the interview is finished, ask Claude to fill in the SOP template from this module's materials. Insist on concrete file names, owners and approval points. Vague steps like check the numbers are a sign the interview is not finished.
Using the template in materials/09-sop-template.md, write the SOP for our month-end close based on everything I told you. Use real file and folder names, name an owner for each step, and mark every step that needs a human approval with APPROVAL REQUIRED. Save it as sops/month-end-close.md.4Test the SOP on a real month
Give Claude last month's files and ask it to follow the SOP literally, stopping at every approval point. Wherever it gets stuck or guesses, the SOP has a gap. Fix the document, not the output.
Follow sops/month-end-close.md step by step using last month's files in finance/2026-08. Stop at every APPROVAL REQUIRED step and wait for me. At the end, list every place where the SOP was unclear or where you had to guess.5Promote the SOP to a skill
When the SOP runs cleanly twice, turn it into a skill in .claude/skills/month-end-close/SKILL.md with a clear name and description, exactly as you learned in Module 5. The SOP stays the human-readable version, the skill is the executable version, and they should always say the same thing.
Turn sops/month-end-close.md into a skill at .claude/skills/month-end-close/SKILL.md. Use YAML frontmatter with name and description, keep every APPROVAL REQUIRED step, and reference the SOP file as the source of truth.Ask any owner where the month-end process is written down and you will usually get the same answer: in my head, and partly in Sarah's. That works until Sarah goes on holiday, and it makes delegating to a person or an agent almost impossible. An undocumented process cannot be delegated. It can only be repeated by the one person who remembers it.
The good news is that you no longer need to sit down and write a manual. You talk through the process once, out loud or in rough notes, and let Claude interview you, spot the gaps and write the SOP. Then the same document becomes the instructions for a skill. One conversation, two assets: a procedure your team can follow and a playbook your agent can execute.
Key points
- A process that lives in one head cannot be delegated to anyone, human or agent.
- Let Claude interview you instead of writing a manual from scratch.
- Test the SOP literally on real files; every guess is a gap to fix.
- The SOP is for people, the skill is for the agent, and they must match.
Avoid
- Documenting the ideal process instead of the one your team actually follows.
- Leaving out the exceptions, which is exactly where the agent will get stuck.
- Skipping the approval markers because it is only internal.
- Letting the SOP and the skill drift apart after edits.
A four-person bookkeeping firm in Leeds ran client onboarding from memory: engagement letter, ID checks, software access, first data request. Every new client took the senior partner about three hours of chasing. She talked the process through with Claude for twenty minutes, got a 14-step SOP with three approval points, and tested it on the next two onboardings. The skill now drafts the letter and the data request, keeps a checklist per client, and she only steps in at the approvals, roughly 45 minutes per client instead of three hours.