Gates before done

I use AI to build client sites, and none of it counts as done until it has passed a set of checks I wrote down before the work started.

Why gates

An AI builder is fast, and it’s confident whether or not it’s right. It will tell you a page is finished when the menu is broken on a phone. It will fill a gap with a plausible fact nobody gave it. Speed isn’t the problem. Calling it done too early is.

So the shop runs on gates. A gate is a check the work has to pass before it moves on. If it fails, the work goes back, not forward.

The gates we run

A written brief first. Every build starts with a brief that says what the page is for, what’s in scope, what can be edited and what can’t. The builder works from the brief, not from a vague request. When the brief and reality disagree, the builder stops and asks.

Three screen widths. Every page gets looked at on a phone, a tablet and a desktop, at 375, 768 and 1280 pixels wide, with the mobile menu opened and closed. Nothing may run off the side of the screen. The phone gets checked first.

Invent nothing. Every fact on a page comes from the client or from the work itself. No made-up numbers, no guessed prices, no reviews that weren’t written. If a fact is missing, the page waits for it rather than filling the space.

The build has to pass. Colors and spacing come from the site’s own design tokens. A value that isn’t a token fails the build, and every link gets checked before launch.

A person signs off. AI drafts. I read every page before it goes live and make the calls. The work carries my name, so I’m the last gate.

What it means for a client

For the person paying for the site, the gates show up as fewer surprises.

• The site you approve on a phone is the site that launches. It was checked there first.
• There are no placeholder claims waiting to be noticed after launch. Anything unconfirmed is marked and held.
• The site ships whole. Pages, links, redirects and the mobile menu are all checked together, not fixed one complaint at a time afterward.

It also means I’ll sometimes come back with a question instead of a finished page. That’s the gate doing its job. A day spent confirming a fact is cheaper than a wrong one on your home page.

Why write it down

Checks that live in someone’s head get skipped on a busy week. Written ones don’t. They also mean the same standard holds whether a page was built by me, by an AI builder, or by both. The client gets one standard, and it’s the one they can read.