Proverbs
Verify before reporting up
A number you forwarded unchecked becomes your number. Check it against the source before it travels.
The seventh law follows numbers upward: the figure you forward becomes your figure, with your name on it, in front of the people you answer to. A machine-drafted analysis is a fine first pass and an unacceptable final one. The division of labor that works is explicit: the machine drafts at full speed, research fills the gaps, and every number that will travel gets checked by the human whose credibility rides on it.
Budget your skepticism where the stakes are. A number that decides nothing can ride through on the draft; a number that sets a budget, prices an ask, or anchors a promise gets traced to its source before it leaves your desk. The discipline is not distrust of the machine. It is respect for the audience.
How to practice it
Split draft from warranty.
Let the machine produce the full analysis fast. What you sign off on is the subset you verified, and you know which is which.
Trace the traveling numbers.
Any figure that will be quoted upward gets a source you can name. The rest can wait until they matter.
Check the joints, not just the values.
Sums, conversions, and period boundaries are where plausible analyses quietly break. Recompute the seams.
Keep the provenance note.
Next to each key figure, where it came from. Future you, asked to defend it, will not remember.
Deep scripture: Codeuteronomy VIII — No claim about the world stands without a fresh observation