What should make a small-business AI workflow stop?

Stop the workflow when an input is prohibited or incomplete, authority is missing, the output breaks its required structure, a material claim lacks support, uncertainty exceeds the review rule, or the consequence falls outside the approved trial.

KEY POINTS

What the operating concept requires

Each handoff defines the input it expects and the validation that may fail closed.
Unusual cases return control to a named person instead of forcing a best guess.
The manual fallback remains documented and usable.
Stop conditions are tested with fictional edge cases before live connections are added.

LIMITS

What this concept does not prove

A stop list cannot anticipate every failure or replace monitoring, incident response, and qualified review.
Silently continuing after a failed check defeats the boundary even when a later human sees the result.