The Judgment-Point Map
Find the steps where somebody reads something and decides — the steps that kept the whole process manual.
Thirty minutes, one process. Write its steps in order, label each one conveyor, judgment point or craft, then name where the freed hours go and who moves them. The map ends in one word you can defend when compute gets cheap.
The three labels — every step gets exactly one
Conveyor — mechanical
- The rule test. Could a written rule decide this step? Then it is conveyor, and AI is not your blocker.
- The movement test. Moving, formatting, routing, chasing, reconciling — conveyor, whatever tool does it.
- The cheaper-answer test. A process that is mostly conveyor wants ordinary automation at a fraction of the token cost. Say so before you buy.
No AI in this column. These steps are basic, cheap, deterministic automation — rules, scripts, integrations, the things software has done reliably for twenty years. Every step you leave here is a step you never pay tokens for, and it runs the same way every time.
Judgment point — the slot
- The read-and-decide test. Somebody reads something and decides. No rule covers it. That is the step that kept the process manual.
- The bounded test. Could you write down what a right answer looks like, and check it afterwards? Bounded — it is a slot. Unbounded — it is craft.
- The escalation test. Name what happens when the machine is unsure. No escalation path, no judgment point — just an unmanaged risk.
This is the only column that gets AI. Restricting the model to these few steps is exactly how you keep the token bill small — one bounded call to decide one thing, instead of a model running the whole process end to end. And every judgment point escalates to a person when the machine is unsure, so the cheap path handles the ordinary cases and a human still owns the hard ones.
Craft — where the people go
- The relationship test. Does the step carry trust, negotiation or accountability? Craft. Leave it, and resource it properly.
- The under-served test. Would customers pay for more of this than you can currently deliver? That is the destination for the freed hours.
- The copy test. Could a competitor buy this from a vendor? If yes, it is not craft. If no, it is your differentiation.
More than a safety net. Your people are not here only to catch the escalations from column two — that is the floor, not the job. This column is the human work customers actually choose you for, and it is where the hours freed by column two get redeployed: the difficult conversation, the bespoke request you currently turn away, the follow-up nobody has time for.
The map
| Step, in order | Label | If judgment point: the decision, in one line |
|---|---|---|
The hour trail
When this process gets faster, where do those hours go, and who moves them? Name a craft step and a person. An aspiration is not a destination.
Verdict
—
Label at least three steps.
Judgment points + a named hour trail · positioned — you know what to buy when compute gets cheap. Judgment points, no destination · half-mapped — you will automate and capture nothing. No judgment points · unmapped — the process wants ordinary automation, or wants leaving alone.
One boundary, honestly: this map cannot time the correction and it cannot price your tokens. Nobody can do the first and no vendor will do the second. It guarantees only that whenever the repricing lands, you already know which parts of this process want compute and which parts want people.
The Judgment-Point Map · Peak State Global · peakstate.global — from the essay on what survives the burst. Print this page for the worksheet version; the verdict box travels with it.
Bring us the map as it stands
Landed on half-mapped? That is the useful outcome — it means the slots are real and the hours have nowhere to land yet. A 30-minute conversation about the craft destination, and the first judgment point worth building, is where that gets fixed.
The Judgment-Point Map is one instrument in the Peak State field kit — essays on the leader's job as it is shifting, and the tools that go with them.
All essays and instruments →