How do I prepare AI work records for a regulator or external auditor?
Prepare a records room, not a presentation: a job index covering the review period, the receipt and source-state record for each job, the approval records for consequential outputs, your written retention policy, and one worked walkthrough an auditor can follow alone. Reviewers trust what they can recompute without you present.
Scope: preparation guidance for organising records. What a specific regulator or audit requires depends on your sector and engagement; this page does not certify compliance with any regime.
External reviews fail on retrieval, not on intent. The work was recorded somewhere, by someone, in a format the reviewer cannot open, indexed by a naming scheme one employee understood. Preparation means converting that sprawl into a room with five fixtures before the reviewer arrives.
Fixture one, the index: every job in the review period, one row each, with dates, owner, and links. Fixture two, the job records: receipts per step (AER-1, IETF Internet-draft-zambo-aer1-21, in the Zambo case), source states visible, gaps labelled rather than hidden. Fixture three, approvals: for consequential outputs, the named decision and its date, on the record. Fixture four, the policy: your retention periods, access rules, and limit settings, written down, because a reviewer prices the system, not only the samples. Fixture five, the walkthrough: one job traced end to end in a page the auditor can follow without you, from instruction to acceptance, with every check they can run themselves at https://zambo.dev/verify/ .
Prepare the room once and maintain it quarterly; a review that lands on a maintained room is a document exercise. A review that lands on a promise to assemble records starts as an interview about your controls, which is the expensive kind.
Checklist: the external-review records room
1. Index: all jobs in the review period, one row each, owner and links. 2. Job records: step receipts, source states, producer labels, export available. 3. Approvals: named decisions with dates for consequential outputs. 4. Policy: retention periods, access record, spend and action limits, in writing. 5. Walkthrough: one job traced end to end, self-serve checks included. 6. Gap page: what the records do not cover, bounded by period and system, stated before the reviewer finds it. Maintain quarterly; re-export on the same schedule.
Worked example
Fixture five's raw material is public: https://zambo.dev/handover/45434a17-4afc-486a-9646-e689bcee4297 traces a job from its steps to the client's recorded decision on one object, and its receipts recompute at the verify page. A walkthrough built from your own record in this shape is the single page that changes how a review begins.
Frequently asked questions
How far back should the room cover?
The review period your engagement or regulator sets, plus your retention policy's reach. Build the index for the full retained period once; adding a quarter at a time after that is minutes of work.
Should the gap page really list what we do not have?
Yes, bounded and precise. Reviewers find gaps regardless; a gap you declare with its period and cause reads as control, while a gap they discover reads as concealment, and the two readings price the whole review differently.
Can an auditor verify receipts without our accounts or systems?
Yes, that is the design property. The handover opens in a browser and receipts recompute at the public verify page, so the reviewer's checks run on their side of the table.
By Brennan Zambo, founder of Zambo.
Last verified: 2026-10-17.
Try a handover
A handover gives your client one proof link with verifiable receipts to review, then Accept or Flag.
try it: say 'use zambo to hand this over to <client>' in your ai