Build it well

A demo shows that something can work once. Building it well means it keeps working: with real data, under real load, with a person genuinely in the loop, and without anyone having to remember to be careful.

This is not about writing more code. Most of what makes a build solid is design choices you make before you write anything: which parts you assemble it from, where a human signs off, what runs on the platform’s own capability instead of custom code, and what never leaves the build’s own configuration.

The eight principles, in one line each

1. Provenance - every number in an answer can be traced back to where it came from, or the answer says plainly that it is not in the data.
2. Determinism - the AI picks which rule applies; the rule itself lives as data a person can edit; the arithmetic is always done the same, reliable way.
3. Modularity - the build is assembled from parts that each do one job and have a clear contract, not one large tangle of custom logic.
4. Domain-free cores - the reusable logic carries no customer names, no specific business detail; everything specific to one company arrives as configuration.
5. Human governance - a real decision is a recorded fact - who decided, what, and when - not a friendly “yes” typed into a chat window.
6. Native-first - use what the platform already gives you before writing custom code; nothing in a build should ever hold a login credential.
7. Operability - a build can be reset, tested, and checked independently, not just run once by the person who built it.
8. Security and sovereignty - credentials, secrets and sensitive data stay in configuration and out of the build’s own logic.

What is on this page and what is on the rest

Page	What it covers
The eight principles	Each principle in full: what it means, what good looks like, how it goes wrong, and the questions to ask of your own build.
Use-case shapes	Nine recurring shapes a business use case takes, and the kinds of parts each one is typically assembled from.
Human approval	How a person decides from an email with Approve and Reject buttons, confirmed on a page - and why a chat reply is not a decision.
Native-first	Why you reach for the platform’s own capability before writing code, and what that buys you.
Document models	How to choose what DocIQ extracts from a document: adopt the default, extend it, write your own last.
Anti-patterns	The mistakes that get built again and again, what each one costs, and the fix.
Review checklist	The same eight-principle review, as a checklist you can run on your own build before you ship it.

None of this requires memorising anything. Pick the page that matches the decision in front of you, use its questions, and move on.