Decision Guide

Use this page when you are not sure which path applies to your AI idea.

Quick answer

Continue experimenting when:

• you use public, synthetic, or non-sensitive data;
• you do not connect to production systems;
• you do not include secrets, passwords, tokens, or customer data;
• the output is reviewed by a person before use;
• the work can be deleted without business impact;
• you use approved company AI resources.

Ask Dev for guidance when:

• you want help choosing a model or tool;
• you want access to company inference resources;
• you need AI-compatible search, fetch tools, or vector databases;
• you have an idea but do not know how to prototype it;
• you are unsure whether the data is sensitive;
• you are unsure whether the work needs handoff.

Start production handoff when:

• you want to use customer data, employee data, financial data, security data, or company-confidential data;
• you want to connect the AI to production systems;
• you want the AI to take actions through tools, scripts, APIs, or agents;
• the output could affect a customer, employee, payment, security decision, or production system;
• the work needs ownership from a specialist team.

Simple decision tree

Examples

Use case	Status	Why
Ask an approved AI tool to rewrite a public help article draft	Continue experimenting	Public or non-sensitive content and no production access
Generate sample code for a prototype using mock data	Continue experimenting	Safe if reviewed before use
Build a demo using synthetic data and company inference resources	Continue experimenting	Good experimentation pattern
Ask Dev which model fits a prototype	Ask for guidance	Dev can help match the problem to the right resource
Write a specification for an AI idea you cannot prototype yourself	Ask for guidance	Specifications are welcome and can help Dev evaluate the idea
Paste customer chat logs into an external AI tool	Start production handoff	Customer data requires approved handling
Let an AI agent restart production services	Start production handoff	Production action requires accountable ownership and SRE/DevOps involvement
Use AI to summarize production incident logs	Start production handoff	Logs may contain sensitive operational or customer data

If you are unsure

Contact Dev before continuing.

They will confirm whether the work can continue as an experiment, needs resource guidance, or should be handed off to the responsible domain specialists.