One page of rules the whole team reads, and one inventory behind it. The rules owner needs about a day to fill it in and has it in use within a week.
My rules about the rules: one page, or nobody reads it. If something is not on the page, it is allowed. A page of bans pushes AI use underground.
Few approvals, fast answers: when waiting is slower than the workaround, people take the workaround.
The page is for everyone, so it uses plain words, not hat names or ids.
Who did this: Clay's AI writing policy is one page and four rules, cited for its format only (C15, size at the time unknown, secondhand).
| Level | What is in it | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| 1 Open | Anything you would publish | Public website and docs, published copy, open source code |
| 2 Internal | Work that would hurt if it leaked, with no personal data | Source code, specs, roadmap, design files, internal docs, aggregate analytics |
| 3 Restricted | Personal data, anything a customer trusted you with, and secrets | Customer records, support tickets with names, employee and candidate data, contracts, financials, passwords, API keys, tokens |
When in doubt, use the higher level. Secrets never go into any AI tool or chat; they live in a secrets manager. My judgment.
Which kinds of tools may touch which level. My judgment, sorted by kind because tool names change every quarter:
| Kind of tool | Level 1 | Level 2 | Level 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Consumer tool on a personal account, free or paid | Yes | No | No |
| Business plan: company account, admin controls, no training on your data by contract | Yes | Yes | Only sources the rules owner cleared (A2) |
| Coding assistant on the repository, company account | Yes | Yes | No real customer data in prompts, fixtures or test data |
| Agent that writes to a repository, database or customer channel | Yes | Yes, in a separate environment | Only through A3 |
| AI feature inside a tool you already pay for | Yes | After the tool owner checks the terms | As for a business plan |
| Self hosted or private deployment | Yes | Yes | Sources the rules owner cleared (A2) |
On the Fix path, watch the fifth row: AI features arrive switched on inside tools already on the bill. They count as new tools (F8, vendor).
Three approvals and one gate. Everything else needs no approval. Questions to the rules owner are answered within two working days. Approvals are recorded on the tool's row in the Inventory database.
| Id | Trigger | Decides | Answer within | A yes needs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A1 New tool | Level 2 or 3 data is about to touch a tool not on the inventory, including an AI feature switched on in a tool you have | Tool owner | 2 working days | A row on the inventory: owner, kind, account type, highest level, cost, who approved and when |
| A2 New level 3 source | Customer, employee or contract data goes into an AI tool for the first time | Rules owner | 5 working days | Processing terms in place. Purpose in one sentence. Only the fields the purpose needs. Source written on the tool's row |
| A3 Agent write access | An agent gets write access to a repository, database, production or customer channel, or wider permissions | Rules owner | 3 working days | Separate from production. No production credentials. A deny list it never touches without a person: login, permissions, secrets, billing, public APIs, data access. Restore tested. Name and end date on the tool's row |
| G4 AI generated UI to customers | UI or copy made with AI is about to reach customers | Experience quality owner in person for the high lane; whoever merges for the low lane | Before merge | The release checklist from part 04, evidence attached. No UI checklist of its own here |
Who did this: Sendbird, about 260 to 310 people, named one person as the contact for every new tool request (C25). PostHog, about 150 to 200 people, has a review bot that escalates anything touching auth, secrets, billing or public APIs (C04). Replit, low hundreds by estimate, separated development from production data after an agent deleted a customer's database (CF1).
Copy it. Replace every blank with a name or a link. Cut any line that does not apply. If it runs past one page, cut again. Post it where the team already looks, then read it aloud at an existing meeting in ten minutes.
Version {{n}}, {{date}}. Owner: {{name of the person who owns these rules}}. Next review: {{date, three months from now}}.