AI Sign-Off Rules for Local Businesses

Two from the video, four bonus

What it drafted, what got caught, and what it does now.

The first two are the catches from the video. The other four are bonus ones from our own business that didn't make the cut. In several of them, the real cause was our own notes or instructions.

From the video · Money owed

“Who still owes us?”

Drafted: a list of who owed us money and who needed a follow-up, built from our notes on each client.
Caught: Nick fixed four of the six money lines by hand. Our share: our notes said “owed” and rarely got updated when things were paid.
Now: it treats any status older than two weeks as a claim, checks the payment system or asks in one line, and writes the answer back into the notes.

From the video · Email

A plan built without the email

Drafted: a plan for a client's big request, built from their older documents. Nick had said a new one was coming.
Caught: the new file had landed in Nick's inbox that morning, so the plan got thrown out. Our share: Nick said “is sending.” It was already sent.
Now: when anyone says a file was sent or is coming, it searches the inbox first, builds from the real file, and says what it found.

Bonus · Proposals

A proposal with five problems

Drafted: a full proposal from our notes: the work, the timeline, and the investment.
Caught: jargon labels, a time on every item, a “what we're cutting” section, a price nobody set, and “you already pay for it” on tools they didn't have.
Now: it checks every proposal against those five before Nick sees it, and leaves prices out unless Nick or Jack set them.

Bonus · Follow-ups

Follow-ups after a talk

Drafted: follow-up emails to people from a talk, each with a personal paragraph guessed from their industry.
Caught: Nick cut every personal line before sending. He wanted basic drafts, and who gets a meeting offer is his call.
Now: one plain template where only the name, business, and link change. Personal touches get suggested in chat, and a person presses send.

Bonus · Captions

Four captions, rewritten by hand

Drafted: captions for four short videos in Nick's voice. One opened with a question.
Caught: Nick rewrote all four to open with the answer. Our share: it had never seen how he rewrites.
Now: it compared its drafts with his rewrites, wrote down the difference, and reads that before every caption.

Bonus · Sign-up form

A promise Nick never made

Drafted: fine print on a sign-up form that said “We won't add you to any mailing list.” Nick never promised that.
Caught: Nick spotted it after the form was live. Our share: nobody read the fine print first, and five people signed up under it.
Now: it writes only what's true today. No “never,” “always,” or “guaranteed” unless Nick approved the exact words.

Every catch became a written rule our AI reads before it works, in three parts: the rule, why it exists, and how to apply it. The AI still makes new mistakes. It just doesn't get to make the same one forever. All six rules are in the download, ready to paste.

Where a person signs off

A price, a promise, or a safety call gets a person.

AI can be confidently wrong. So at our business, anything with a price, a promise, or a safety call gets read by Nick or Jack before it goes out. Everything else, it can draft.

The three questions, in order

A price?A person reads it before it goes out.

A promise?A person reads it before it goes out.

A safety call?A person reads it, or a check they can do at a glance.

None of the threeIt drafts. It sends on its own only after it has earned that.

Let it say when it's unsure

A charge comes inA new bank or card charge lands in the books.

It suggestsA category, how sure it is, and a one-line reason.

80% sure or moreFiled automatically.

Under 80%It lands on an “Unsure” list. A person accepts it or picks the right one, and their choice wins.

That's the “Unsure” list we built for our own bookkeeping. Running the AI again never overwrote something a person decided. Let it do the obvious ones, and make it raise its hand on the rest. That page is custom software, so the download has the habit version: your AI rates how sure it is, right in the chat, and holds the unsure ones for you.

The same rule at three of our clients, by business type. Each one is custom software we built for that business, so it isn't in the download. The rule behind all three is.

A price, at a tree-care company. AI read their past estimates and suggested shortcuts for the descriptions their estimators type over and over. The team reviews every shortcut, nothing fills in by itself, and the estimator still sets the price.
A promise, at an electrical contractor. AI turns a tech's quick field notes into a visit report a customer can read, with no promises, no prices, and no invented work. The owner reads it and presses Send. This one is a working demo we built for them, not live yet.
A safety call, at a roofing company. Hazard notes get translated for the crew, and the English original always shows right under the translation, so anyone can check a line at a glance.

What AI is

Four layers, one inside the other.

When someone says “AI,” they could mean a chat app, a chatbot on a website, or software that does a whole job on its own. Here's how those fit together.

1. The umbrella

AI

Software that learns patterns from examples instead of following rules someone wrote by hand. Show it thousands of emails marked “lead” or “not a lead,” and it catches “How much to take down an oak?” without a rule for it.

2. The engine

The language model

It predicts the next word, one piece at a time, very fast. Unless you hand it a search tool or your files, it isn't looking anything up. That's why it's fluent before it's right.

3. The brand

The model

Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and the rest. Same idea underneath, different strengths. We build mostly on Claude. What matters more than the brand is what you connect it to and what you tell it.

4. Engine plus hands

The agent

The engine, plus connections to your email, calendar, files, and books, plus a loop: look, act, check, and go again until the job is done. Like a sharp new hire working from your checklists.

Three things to know before you hand it anything

It only knows your business if you tell it. It knows how businesses work in general. It can't know your prices, your customers, your crew, or what happened yesterday until you tell it. When nobody told ours a real price, it filled the blank with one that sounded right.
It isn't a calculator. Ask the same thing twice and you get two different good answers. Pair it with tools that do the same thing every time: our AI writes in Nick's voice, plain code scores and cleans each draft, and Nick reads it before it goes out.
It doesn't have to be 100% right to be useful. Our rule of thumb: it does 80 to 90 percent of the job on the first pass, with a little tweaking. Someone who's good at the work checks the rest.

What's in the download

Hand the folder to your AI. Pick the pieces you want.

ai-plain-english/the folder you download

├─ START-HERE-FOR-YOUR-AI.mdyour AI shows you the pack, asks what you want, and sets it up

├─ six-jobs-six-rules.mdtwo catches from the video, four bonus, and the rule each one became

├─ sign-off-rules.mdthe price, promise, and safety-call block for your CLAUDE.md

├─ skills/morning-check/reads what lands in your inbox and writes a fit verdict for each

├─ skills/write-in-my-voice/a few versions, the same cleanup every time, and you read it

├─ ai-in-plain-english.mdthe four layers and the three things to know, on one page

└─ README.mda one-minute start

Unzip it, open the folder in Claude Code (the Claude desktop app's Code tab is the easiest way in), and type:

Read START-HERE-FOR-YOUR-AI.md and set me up.

It shows you everything in the pack, from the video and the bonus ones, and asks which pieces you want
It asks only the questions those pieces need, like what counts as a price, a promise, and a safety call in your trade
It writes your rules into your CLAUDE.md, and shows you before it saves
It sets up the skills you pick, then runs each one once with you
It can set up a rules folder, so every correction you make becomes a written rule

Haven't given your AI a rulebook yet? Our AI memory setup builds one with you, and this download adds the sign-off rules to it.

Who it's for

Owners who want AI to help without speaking out of turn.

We're two brothers in Lake Charles who build AI tools for local businesses. We run our own business on AI every day, and it still gets things wrong every week. This is how we keep it useful: a person checks the price, the promise, and the safety call, and every catch becomes a rule. It fits any owner whose AI drafts quotes, emails, reports, or posts, from tree services and roofers to electricians and contractors. Your AI rewrites the rules for your trade, so it works wherever you are.

Want to see what we build for paying clients? Look through our work.

Questions

Common questions.

Is it really free?

Yes. No card and no trial. The files are yours to keep and change.

Do I need to know how to code?

No. Every file is plain English. Your AI reads the setup file, asks you questions in small batches, and writes the rules for you. You answer in your own words.

What do I need to get started?

A computer and a Claude account. Claude Code comes with the paid Claude plans, and the Claude desktop app's Code tab is the easiest way in. You can also upload the files to a regular Claude chat and paste the rules it writes into your project's instructions.

Will my AI still make mistakes?

Yes. It's wrong sometimes and still useful. The AI will still make new mistakes. Writing each catch down as a rule is how you stop the same one from coming back, and the sign-off rule puts a person in front of anything with a price, a promise, or a safety call.

What counts as a price, a promise, or a safety call?

You decide, and it depends on your trade. A price is any number a customer could hold you to. A promise is any date, warranty, or "we will" in your name, including fine print and reports that describe the work. A safety call is anything a crew acts on to stay safe. Your AI asks what those look like in your business and writes them down.

I use ChatGPT or Gemini. Does this still work?

The rules are plain English, so you can paste them wherever your AI keeps its standing instructions. The setup file is written for Claude, which is what we build on.

Can Redwater set this up for my business?

Yes. We're based in Lake Charles and build this kind of thing into local businesses. Book an AI audit and we'll tell you honestly whether it's worth it for you.

Six jobs AI got wrong, and the rules they became.

Get the download