Work Receipts
Work produced with an LLM should come with a receipt.
AI helps you produce more work, but you're still fully accountable for the result. Yet the person receiving the work usually sees only the finished artefact and a vague assurance that it was reviewed. The checks, sources and unresolved doubts disappear.
A Work Receipt keeps that evidence with the work. It records the request, inputs, checks, findings and limits so the next person can judge what is usable. If a model turns a customer's conditional intention to renew into a confirmed commitment, the receipt makes the mismatch visible before it enters a forecast.
Accountability needs evidence.
Accountability identifies the person who must stand behind the work. It does not preserve the basis on which they judged it usable. After handover, a careful review and a cursory glance can look identical.
Assigning responsibility doesn't show what verification took place. "I reviewed it" doesn't tell the person receiving the report what you checked, which sources you compared it with or what you couldn't confirm.
Receipts make the evidence visible.
Suppose you use an LLM to prepare a customer's renewal assessment from account records and meeting notes. Instead of attaching "reviewed" to the report, you record the checks and what each one established.
| Work | renewal-assessment.md, the report being handed over. |
|---|---|
| Figures checked | Adoption figures compared with the supplied account records; they agree. |
| Claim checked | The report says the customer has committed to renew. |
| Evidence | The meeting notes describe an intention to renew with conditions. |
| Finding | The supplied evidence does not support treating renewal as a confirmed commitment. |
The full receipt also identifies the original request, the inputs and the person preparing it, so the next reader knows what was being checked and by whom.
Recipients decide what's usable.
The recipient can use the checked adoption figures while asking for the renewal claim to be corrected before the assessment enters a forecast. They have a specific issue to resolve, rather than a general assurance to accept or a whole review to reconstruct.
The receipt supplies a basis for judgment, not a certificate. The recipient can examine the cited material or repeat a check that matters to their decision.
Evidence travels with the work.
If the assessment becomes a presentation, the customer's conditional intention must not become a confirmed renewal simply because the claim moved onto a slide. The presentation's producer can refer to the assessment and its receipt, preserving both the source and the qualification.
Their new receipt distinguishes the earlier evidence they relied on from the checks they performed for new claims or changes. The next reader can follow the account back to its sources without mistaking an inherited claim for a fresh confirmation.