SOP (Standard Operating Procedure)

An SOP is a written procedure describing how to perform a specific recurring task — the same artifact used to onboard human employees, repurposed to onboard AI employees.

An SOP captures institutional knowledge in a portable form: 'when X happens, do Y, then Z, escalate if W'. For human teams it's the new-hire training doc. For AI teams it's the prompt context: paste the SOP into the employee's instructions and it inherits the procedure. The quality of your SOPs is the quality of your AI workforce. Vague SOPs produce vague AI behavior. Crisp, example-rich SOPs produce predictable, on-brand output. This is why the move 'document your processes for AI' is also the move 'become a better-run company'.

Example

SOP: 'Handling refund requests'. 1. Confirm order in Stripe. 2. Check policy window (30 days). 3. If within window, refund. 4. If outside, offer credit. 5. Escalate amounts over $200. The same doc trains the human and the AI.

How OpenLabor uses it

OpenLabor employees ship with starter SOPs per role and let you upload your own. Updating an SOP retrains the employee instantly.

Do I need to rewrite my SOPs to feed them to an AI?

Usually no. AI employees read the same docs humans read. Cleanup helps, but a working human SOP is a working AI SOP.

Where should I store SOPs?

Wherever the rest of your team finds them. Notion, Google Docs, GitHub. The point is one source of truth that updates both your humans and your AI.

Related: ai-employee, mission, guardrails.

AI Labor Glossary