Building the case for a new service, then rebuilding it

I was asked to look into on-demand transit: collect the information, visit a city that already runs it, and come back with a report for City leadership.

To be clear about where things stand: no decision has been made. The City has reviewed options, and anything further goes through the City's procurement process and the City Council. This post is about the work of preparing the report.

What we built

Over one long conversation, Claude and I produced:

• A presentation built from my source material and revised through seven major versions.
• Print handouts that match it, with page numbers.
• A full script, written and rewritten.
• Emails to the people I needed answers from.
• Research into state purchasing law and federal procurement rules.

I visited another city to see eighteen months of their results in person. Those numbers went into the deck the same week.

Then it changed

Partway through, I learned that the purchasing approach I had assumed was not available to us. The report could no longer be a pitch for one arrangement. It had to become a neutral look at the service model itself.

That meant rebuilding it. Company-specific figures came out. The framing changed from "here is a partnership" to "here is what we learned and what the options are." Claude redid the deck, the script and the handouts to match, and I asked it to keep the tone forward-looking. A plan that changes is not a plan that failed.

What I take from this

Before AI, a change like that would have meant starting the slides over. This time it was a rework, not a restart. The cost of being wrong got smaller, and that makes it easier to do the right thing when the facts change.

Where it falls short

It got a point of state law wrong, with confidence. I caught it. I wrote about that in When the AI is wrong, and when it says no.

It also offered me a condensed version of the report when I wanted the full one. You have to say what you want.

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Part of the series 27 ways I actually use AI. Claude drafted this post from the record of our work together.