Prepare procedural documents
Most of the output can be produced by software today.
This is the most automatable shape of work there is, and also the shape that most needs a live connection to the system the record lives in. Without that connection an agent can prepare the entry but cannot file it.
| How automatable | Mostly automatable |
|---|---|
| Kind of work | Recording, documentation and administration |
| Jobs that do it | 15 occupations |
| Tool categories that apply | Tools and auth, Builders |
| O*NET activity | Documenting/Recording Information (4.A.3.b.6) |
What this looks like on the job
Not our paraphrase. These are real task statements recorded against this activity, spread across the 15 occupations that perform it.
- Prepare operating and maintenance manuals, studies, or reports.
- Write technical reports or other documentation, such as handbooks or bulletins, for use by engineering staff, management, or customers.
- Write documents describing protocols, policies, standards for use, maintenance, and repair of medical equipment.
- Write detailed functional specifications that document the hardware development process and support hardware introduction.
- Prepare, maintain, or revise quality assurance documentation or procedures.
- Participate in preparation of product usage and precautionary label instructions.
- Complete production reports, purchase orders, and material, tool, and equipment lists.
- Design cognitive aids, such as procedural storyboards or decision support systems.
- Prepare documentation for new manufacturing processes or engineering procedures.
- Write operational instructions to be used in nuclear plant operation or nuclear fuel or waste handling and disposal.
- Develop formal documentation for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) devices, including quality assurance guidance, quality control protocols, process control checklists, data collection, or reporting.
- Determine quality, cost, strength, and quantity of required materials, and enter figures on materials lists.
- Document robotics test procedures and results.
- Prepare capability data, training materials, or other documentation for transfer of processes to production.
- Document procedures, such as calibration of optical or fiber optic equipment.
- Develop customer documentation, such as performance specifications, training manuals, or operating instructions.
- Calculate excavation tonnage and prepare graphs and fill-hauling diagrams for use in earth-moving operations.
What we would actually use
One recommendation rather than a shortlist, because a shortlist is just your problem handed back. This is what we would buy for recording, documentation and administration, and what it costs.
The work is not writing the record, it is filing it where the record lives. Make reaches most of those systems from $9 a month, which is the cheapest honest start; Composio is for when you are writing the agent yourself.
Chosen for the cheapest thing that does the job, not the best funded. Nothing on this site is sponsored, and the full landscape is there when you want to disagree with us.
The rest of the category
Context, not alternatives to weigh up. We name the layer rather than promise a named product does your specific task.
Matched from the kind of work, not from vendor marketing. Check any of them can reach the system your records actually live in — that connection, not the model, is where these projects stall.
How people actually do it
No workflow names this activity yet, but these automate the same kind of work, with the prompts to paste and what to keep for yourself.
Who does this work
15 occupations in the O*NET database perform this activity. Each one has a full breakdown of its other tasks.
- Aerospace Engineers
- Architects, Except Landscape and Naval
- Architectural and Civil Drafters
- Bioengineers and Biomedical Engineers
- Computer Hardware Engineers
- Environmental Engineers
- Health and Safety Engineers, Except Mining Safety Engineers and Inspectors
- Human Factors Engineers and Ergonomists
- Industrial Engineers
- Manufacturing Engineers
- Microsystems Engineers
- Nanotechnology Engineering Technologists and Technicians
- Nuclear Engineers
- Photonics Technicians
- Robotics Technicians
Work that goes with it
O*NET groups these under “Document technical designs, procedures, or activities”. In practice they tend to be done by the same person, in the same sitting.
Method. The activity, its taxonomy placement and the occupations that perform it come straight from the public-domain O*NET 30.3 database. The automatability band is ours: we map each of O*NET’s 41 generalized work activities to how much of its output current software can produce, assuming a person still reviews and owns the result. It is a coarse three-way judgment on purpose. A precise-looking percentage here would be invented.