How do I show a client which parts of a deliverable I did and which parts the AI did?
Show the step record, not a summary of it. Review the receipt and actual deliverable before accepting a handover.
Clients ask the split question for a practical reason: they are pricing your judgement. A deliverable that might be one unedited generation is worth less than the same deliverable visibly directed, checked, and finished by the professional they hired. Describing the split in a cover email keeps it a claim. The record makes it a reading exercise.
The mechanism is mundane, which is why it works. Steps taken through the connection carry the tool and producer as recorded at execution. Your own contributions, the analysis, the rewrite, the decision, are added as steps in the same job, labelled as yours, with their saved results. The handover then reads as a credits roll: research by the agent with its sources shown, draft by the agent, structure and final pass by you, each with dates.
Two practices keep the split honest and therefore persuasive. Label at the time, never in retrospect; a label added during a dispute is a story, while a label saved during the work is a record. And include the review steps, not only the production steps: the client is buying the checking as much as the making, and the record is where the checking becomes visible.
Checklist: the contribution-split delivery
1. Run AI steps through the connection so their producer labels are recorded at execution. 2. Enter your own substantive steps (analysis, rewrite, verification, decision) as steps in the same job, labelled with your name. 3. Deliver the handover link, not a description of the split. 4. In the delivery message, point at two steps only: the one that best shows the AI's contribution and the one that best shows yours. 5. Keep the same labelling on revisions; the split stays current as the work evolves.
Worked example
Sample: a strategy memo delivered as a six-step job: source research (agent, sources resolved), data pull (agent), outline (the freelancer), draft (agent), rewrite of the recommendations (the freelancer), fact check against sources (the freelancer). The client reads the split in the step list itself and the pricing conversation changes subjects. Public handovers in this section show the step-and-label shape the example uses. (Sample scenario; no live record is cited.)
Frequently asked questions
Will showing the AI's steps make the client value the work less?
The opposite, in practice. What devalues work is uncertainty about whether a professional was involved at all. A visible split, with your direction and review on the record, prices the deliverable as professional work that used tools, which is what it is.
My own steps happen in documents and calls, not in the connection. Can they still be steps?
Yes: add them to the job as steps with their saved results (the revised file, the decision note) and your label. The record's rule is that a step is saved when it happens, with what it produced.
What if a step was a mix, AI draft heavily edited by me?
Record it as two steps: the generation, then your edit, each with its saved result. The pair shows the transformation, which is exactly the contribution a client is trying to see.
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