What should I preserve right now when a client disputes AI-assisted work?
Preserve everything in original form today: the contract and scope messages, the deliverables exactly as sent, the receipts and handover for the work, the source states behind disputed outputs, and the full message thread. Export copies to storage you control. Do not edit, re-export, or tidy anything.
Scope: general information about organising records, not legal advice. For a live dispute with significant money at stake, a lawyer in your jurisdiction is the next call after preservation.
Disputes destroy evidence by accident far more often than by intent. A file gets re-exported and its dates move. A chat gets summarized and the original wording is lost. A deliverable gets "fixed" after the complaint, and now nobody can show what was actually delivered. The first rule of preservation is therefore negative: change nothing. Preserve originals, work on copies.
What to preserve, in order of fragility. The message thread first, because platforms and memories both edit it: export or screenshot the full thread with dates visible, including the messages where scope and price were agreed. The deliverables as sent, second: the exact files and versions the client received, not your current working copies. The work record third: the handover link, the receipt index, and the source states, which together show what the AI produced, what it rested on, and what the client accepted and when.
Then the commercial frame: the contract or proposal, the invoices, and any acceptance messages. Store the whole set in two places you control, name it by client and date, and write one paragraph while it is fresh: what is disputed, in the client's words, and what you believe happened. That paragraph, written today, is worth more in six months than any reconstruction.
Checklist: preserve in the first 24 hours
1. Full message thread, exported with dates. 2. Deliverables exactly as sent (files and versions). 3. Handover link and receipt index for the work. 4. Source states for any disputed output. 5. Contract, proposal, and scope-change messages. 6. Invoices and payment history. 7. Your one-paragraph account, written today. 8. Two copies, in storage you control, folder named [client]-[date]-dispute. Do not: edit originals, re-export deliverables, delete chats, or discuss the dispute in the preserved thread.
Worked example
The recorded layer of this checklist is the part that cannot be reconstructed later, which is why it exists in advance on recorded work: the public handover https://zambo.dev/handover/45434a17-4afc-486a-9646-e689bcee4297 keeps the steps, the saved results, and the client's acceptance decision together, so a dispute that starts today finds items 3 and 4 already preserved by design.
Frequently asked questions
The client is asking me to fix the work first. Should I?
Preserve everything on this page before any fix, and keep the fixed version as a new, separate deliverable. Fixing in place destroys the exact evidence the dispute is about, whatever your intentions.
Is a screenshot of a chat good preservation?
It is better than nothing and weaker than an export. Take both where the platform allows: the export for completeness, the screenshot for dates and context a checker can read at a glance.
What if the AI work was never recorded with receipts?
Preserve the chats, files, and messages you do have, and say plainly in your account paragraph that execution records were not kept. Going forward, route the work through a recording connection so the next dispute starts from evidence, not archaeology.
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