Revisit Your AI Docs Once a Year

Documentation rots. Not because anyone is careless, but because everything around it moves: systems get updated, people leave, vendors change their products, regulations evolve. A document that's perfect in January can be fiction by December.

So put a date on the calendar: once a year, re-read your AI documentation and ask three questions. What's changed that isn't reflected here? What's in here that's no longer true? What's missing that we've learned since?

In my federal grants compliance days, annual reporting forced this discipline — once a year, you reconciled the story on paper with reality. AI documentation deserves the same ritual. Retire what's dead, correct what's drifted, and date the review so the next person knows when it was last true.

Pick a moment that sticks: the new year, your fiscal year-end, the anniversary of your first AI deployment. Put it on the calendar now, with a named owner.

Living documents beat dead binders. An auditor would much rather see a one-page doc reviewed last month than a fifty-page manual last touched two years ago. Freshness is credibility.

I explain frameworks; I don't give legal counsel.