Tools
The artefacts a Nutropic engagement produces along the way
The catalogue of artefacts an engagement produces: charters, briefs, mandates, specifications, decision records, evaluation suites and the diagnostic instruments that earn the framework its keep in production.
Overview
What the tools catalogue covers
- The methodology layer's stages and disciplines name what the engagement does; the tools catalogue names what the engagement produces. Every stage outputs artefacts that travel forward into the next stage and outlive the engagement when it closes. The framework names the load-bearing ones rather than every working note, and the catalogue is structured so a practitioner can find the right artefact for the stage and pattern they are working on without holding the whole inventory in their head. The catalogue holds three families of artefact, organised by what role the artefact plays in the engagement.
- Pattern-direction artefacts are the per-pattern documents that carry the human's judgement into the runtime: a charter for Partnership, a brief per task for Delegation, a standing mandate for Agency and a design-time specification for Utility. The four are not interchangeable, and using the wrong artefact for a pattern is one of the framework's recognisable antipatterns. Diagnostic instruments are the assessment artefacts produced during Frame, Assess and Map: readiness reports, workflow maps in either mode, pattern-fit assessments and candidacy profiles. Operational artefacts are what the engagement leaves behind after Handoff: evaluation suites, monitoring runbooks, incident response playbooks, change-control protocols and decision records.
- Each artefact is scoped narrowly and described with enough specificity to be reused across engagements rather than rebuilt from scratch, which is how the catalogue earns its keep over the course of a practice. The catalogue is research-grade rather than fully canonical; some entries are stable framework outputs, others are practitioner conventions still being formalised. The forthcoming Implementation Companion develops the deepest treatment of each artefact, including the templates, the failure modes specific to each one and the conventions for how they travel between the consultant and the team that owns the work after the engagement closes.
Contact
Want to talk about the artefacts your AI work should be producing?
Reach out for a conversation about which artefacts your team is missing and how the framework's tools catalogue applies to your engagement.
hello@nutropic.ai