Finding what repeats, and naming its inputs

A workflow is worth building once you've done something twice and expect to again. The first move is separating what stays the same from what changes: turning event notes into a volunteer brief has stable steps — extract timings, assign owners, list unknowns — and variable inputs, which are the notes themselves.

Write those two lists down separately. The stable half becomes your instructions; the variable half becomes the slots you fill each run. Most failed templates are failed because something variable got written into the stable half — a venue name, a date, an assumption about how many volunteers there are.

Then define the input contract. Which fields are required, and — the question people skip — what should happen when one is missing? A time, an owner and a venue are not equally optional, and "do your best" is not a policy.

The default without a stated policy is invention, because you asked for a brief and a brief has a venue in it. Say explicitly: if the venue is missing, stop and ask for it; if an owner is missing, write "unassigned" and list it under open questions. Different fields can have different rules — that's the point of writing them down.

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