How to review a finished long job in ten minutes
Originally published on Blogger on October 1, 2026.
A long job comes back. The report looks thorough. Do you trust it?
Reviewing delegated work is a skill of its own, and it's different from doing the work. Here is a ten-minute routine that works whether the job was done by a person, a script or an AI assistant.
Minutes 0–2: Read the decisions first.
Skip to whatever needs your call. If the report doesn't separate "needs your decision" from "for information", that is your first finding: ask for it next time.
Minutes 2–4: Check against the definition of done.
Before the job started, you (ideally) wrote down how you'd know it was finished: the totals reconcile, every open question has an owner, the tests pass. Run that check now, before reading the summary, because a confident summary can make a wrong result feel right.
Minutes 4–6: Spot-check two items.
Pick one item you expect to be easy and one you expect to be hard. Trace each back to its source. Two checks won't prove everything, but they tell you whether the rest deserves trust or a deeper look.
Minutes 6–7: Read the gaps.
What was skipped? What was uncertain? What assumptions were made? A good report volunteers these. If it lists none, treat that as a question, not as good news.
Minutes 7–8: Compare cost with expectation.
Did it cost about what you expected? A big gap, in either direction, tells you something about how the job was scoped.
Minutes 8–10: Decide, then leave a note.
Accept, send back with specific instructions, or escalate to a person. Then write one line for next time: the thing you wish the handoff had said. That line is how the next handoff gets better.
A hypothetical example (illustrative only)
Imagine a research-and-draft job: pull the open questions from a folder of project notes, sort them by owner and draft a follow-up for each. The return note lists the questions by owner, drafts a follow-up for each, flags a few places where the notes contradict each other, and says one question has no owner because the notes never named one. Your ten minutes: read the contradictions and the unowned question first, check the sorted list against the notes, spot-check two drafts, read what was skipped, compare the cost, then accept the drafts that pass and send the rest back.
Where Octuo fits
Octuo keeps long, multi-step jobs going after the chat closes and reports back when they're done, so this review is the part you meet first. Cost is previewed before and reported after every turn, so the cost check in minutes 7 to 8 is reading rather than guessing. Octuo is available for macOS.