There’s an old automation truth that applies doubly to AI: automate a broken process and you just make the mess faster. Documenting the process first is the unglamorous step that makes automation reliable. Here’s how to do it, and how dgm handles it. (dgm implements osFoundry, a separate company’s platform — we are not osFoundry.)

Why documentation comes first

Automation amplifies whatever process you point it at. Point it at a poorly understood or broken process and you get faster dysfunction. Documenting first lets you fix obvious problems, decide what to automate, and identify where a human needs to stay in the loop — before you build anything. It’s cheap insurance against expensive rework.

What to capture

Document the real process, not the idealized one:

  • Steps — what actually happens, in order.
  • Decisions — the choices made, and the rules (or judgment) behind them.
  • Inputs and outputs — what goes in and comes out at each step.
  • Exceptions and edge cases — the messy parts (the most important).
  • Systems — which tools are involved.
  • Roles — who does what.

Exceptions matter most

The edge cases are where rigid automation breaks. Capturing them tells you where you need AI judgment (to handle variation) versus deterministic steps (for the exact parts) versus a human checkpoint (for the high-stakes or ambiguous cases). That mix is what makes an AI workflow reliable.

Fix before you automate

Documenting often surfaces problems — redundant steps, unclear handoffs, workarounds — that you should fix before automating, so you automate an improved process rather than locking in a flawed one.

How dgm helps

dgm documents the target process as part of scoping (in or after the $399 assessment) before building automation — capturing steps, decisions, and exceptions, and flagging where AI judgment or human checkpoints belong. That documentation is the foundation of the reliable automation dgm builds at $3,999/month. If you’d rather explore the platform yourself first, go straight to osFoundry; if you want automation built on a solid foundation, that’s where dgm comes in.