Method

Before AI touches it, decide two things.

What would make this yours. The example only you would use. The number nobody else has. The position you hold that your category does not. The thing you would say in the room that the deck would not. Write those down; they are the brief.

Where AI must stop and ask. The claims it cannot source. The conventions in your field it cannot be sure of. The numbers it would be guessing. Write those down too; they are the stop conditions. Quality goes in here, at the front, not at the end.

Then ask AI to write the prompt it wants from you, and edit that. You will get a better brief in three minutes than you would write in thirty.

Hand it over. Analysis, processing, prototyping, the long middle — that is AI's, and it is getting longer: agents that write and run code, work a browser, carry a plan for hours while you are somewhere else. Let it.

But do not disappear. Set the stop conditions so AI shows its work at the points you chose, asks the questions you told it to ask, and waits. Answer fast and let it continue. Interleaved beats hand-off: the builder who stays in the loop catches the wrong turn at minute ten, not hour four, and is still sharp when the last ten arrives.

The last ten is a short checklist, not a long read. Reviews get skipped; checklists get done.

Make it specific: swap every generic noun for the real one. Make it clean: strip the words and patterns AI puts in by default. Verify: every claim to a source you have actually read. Make it yours: read it aloud, or have someone who knows you read it — your own sense of your voice is the one instrument to distrust. Sign it: one line saying what AI did and what you did.

Five tests. Pass them and it carries your name. Fail one and it is still AI's.

Every correction you make in the last ten is something AI did not know. Keep it. Save the corrected version and the reason where the next run starts. Turn the corrections into standing rules — the words you never use, the examples you always use, the claims that need a source in your field — and open the next session with them. Your tens are how the loop learns; throw them away and every build starts from zero.

10-80-10 is for building. It is not for deciding between right answers, and it is not for checking a domain AI already handles better than you do. If the task is classification, verification or a decision with one correct answer, split the work rather than sandwich it.