Worked guide · Claims case preparation

Build a claims preparation assistant, from source records to release evidence.

Carry one read-only claims assistant from the decision to fund it through release evidence, failure handling, operation and economics. Examiners keep every case decision.

Synthetic reference example. Every record, name and identifier here is invented. It shows the method applied end to end; it is not a client deployment or a measured result.

How this guide works

Ten parts, one workflow, the same identifiers throughout.

Each part answers one question a business owner, technical lead or control owner has to settle before the next commitment. Read it straight through, or jump to the part that matches the decision in front of you.

Part 1 of 10 · Decision and audience

Decide whether to release a read-only assistant to one examiner team.

The decision is narrow on purpose: one team, one product line, preparation only. Everything in this guide exists to support or withhold that one release.

Head of claims operationsAccountable owner. Decides release and answers for the result.
Claims examiners (team A)Users. Define what good preparation looks like and adjudicate test cases.
Technical leadBuilds the path from request to cited summary and runs the evaluation.
Model risk or compliance reviewerReviews the evidence and the controls before release.

Output: a completed workflow brief, evidence plan and release decision. All figures, evidence records and role sign-offs below are invented teaching material; no evaluation was run and no person has approved a real release.

One publication record

Workflow / packageclaims-case-preparation / 1.1.0; 26 October 2026
Agent / runtimeclaims-context-assistant@1.1.0 / releases/claims-runtime-v2
Context specification / requestclaims-case-prep-context-v1 / REQ-C-1042-01
Read policypolicies/claims-read-v4
Evaluation / release evidenceevaluations/claims-context-v2 / evidence/claims-release-v2
Information productsclaims.claim-status@1.0.0; claims.claim-relationships@1.0.0; claims.procedures@1.0.0

The product versions below are assumed accepted for this teaching scenario. The 0.x contracts in Agent Onboarding are earlier, pre-certification design examples; this guide illustrates the later release decision rather than reporting their certification.

Part 2 of 10 · Business baseline

Measure today’s work before anything changes.

In the current workflow, an examiner opens assignment, claim, policy and document systems plus the procedure library, resolves the parties and applicable dates, assembles a packet, and corrects it after review. Missing or contradictory facts go to the source owner. Waiting and correction count as part of the work.

Baseline method: compare accepted work, including exceptions.

For a real baseline, log every eligible team A preparation over two ordinary weeks, stratified by complexity. Start the clock when preparation is requested; stop when the examiner accepts a packet with supported facts, the applicable procedure, citations and explicit unresolved items. Include waiting, corrections and manual fallback. Count each effort minute once; the exception bucket includes fallback effort not counted elsewhere. Record exclusions and reasons before comparison.

The completed teaching record assumes 40 eligible cases in 5–16 October 2026. A separate timed replay uses the same case facts, balanced examiner order and independent review for the target workflow. It includes four exception cases completed manually. These invented values show the calculation; they are not observations or forecasts. The timed replay is separate from the repeat-trial release tests in part 8.

Accepted preparations / eligible cases40 / 4040 / 40, including 4 manual fallbacks
Median elapsed request-to-accepted time52 minutes38 minutes
Total assembly + review + correction + exception effort1,000 + 160 + 40 + 80 = 1,280 minutes320 + 240 + 40 + 80 = 680 minutes
Mean total effort per accepted preparation1,280 / 40 = 32 minutes680 / 40 = 17 minutes
Preparations needing correction / eligible cases8 / 404 / 40
Exceptions / eligible cases; handling effort4 / 40; 80 minutes4 / 40; 80 minutes
Median assignment-to-supported examiner decision2.4 business days2.4 business days

Preparation is faster in this invented replay; the decision outcome is unchanged. No better coverage, payment or claimant outcome is established. Compare case mix, queue age and reviewer staffing in the monitored rollout before drawing a benefit conclusion.

Part 3 of 10 · Scope and exclusions

One team, one product line, read-only.

Candidate 1.1.0 scope

  • Examiner team A, group disability, region 2; one approved internal workbench.
  • Status, events within the assigned case, resolved parties and the applicable procedure.
  • A cited preparation packet, reviewed by the examiner before use. The existing systems remain available for manual work.

Held or excluded

  • Prior-claims history across cases is held after candidate 1.0.0 fails party isolation.
  • Coverage decisions, payments, customer contact and internal-note drafting or writes are excluded.
  • Other teams, regions, product lines, background jobs and claims outside the examiner’s assignment are excluded.

Target workflow: the examiner selects an assigned case in the existing workbench; the assistant checks context and sources and prepares a cited packet; the examiner checks and corrects it, then makes the case decision in the existing system. Exceptions return to manual preparation with the reason and source owner visible. This release changes preparation, not decision authority.

Part 4 of 10 · Prerequisites

What must exist before the first line of code.

This dependency register is part of the release boundary. Each row needs an owner, an accepted commitment and failure evidence. All states below are synthetic assumptions.

Identity, assignment service and claims-read-v4Identity owner: fresh user and workload authorization on every source, tool and cache pathDeny on revoked, unknown or unavailable assignment. Assumed ready; revocation fixtures in claims-context-v2.
claims.claim-status@1.0.0: case grain, status and case eventsClaims data owner: authoritative case interface, version and watermark; maximum age 10 minutes plus current-version checkWithhold on stale data, changed version or unavailable source. Assumed ready; stale-source fixture.
claims.claim-relationships@1.0.0: case/person/role grainPolicy administration owner: case-scoped insured/employer/policyholder mapping and ambiguity testsClarify unresolved roles; no cross-case lookup. Assigned-case scope ready; prior-claims route held.
claims.procedures@1.0.0: procedure/version/effective intervalProcedure owner: approved product/region/date applicability and source rightsWithhold when no single applicable, permitted version is available. Assumed ready; superseded-version fixture.
Workbench, protected evidence store and runtime-v2Technical and service owners: source rights, licensed integration, trace access, tested restriction and rollbackManual preparation if unavailable; never silently serve an old packet. Assumed ready after recovery drill.
Independent claims review and operating capacityClaims operations: adjudicated expected results; funded review and exception coverHold rollout if reviewer capacity or owner sign-off is missing. Assumed ready for team A only.

The 10-minute age limit is an invented design choice, not an insurance standard. A recent timestamp alone cannot establish current truth; the current-version check and source change handling must work too.

Part 5 of 10 · Completed example

One synthetic case, resolved field by field.

Case C-1042 is invented. Request REQ-C-1042-01 applies claims-case-prep-context-v1, policies/claims-read-v4 and claims-context-assistant@1.1.0. The execution layer resolves the following values before model-facing retrieval.

Requester and roleExaminer E-17, team AVerified identity
AssignmentC-1042 assigned to E-17Claims assignment service
Claim and product lineC-1042, group disability, region 2Claim status product
Claimant roleInsured employee; the employer is the policyholderParty relationship product
Governing dateDate of loss: 6 October 2026Scenario’s approved applicability definition; not a universal claims rule
ProcedureVersion 5, effective 1 October 2026; version 4 ended 30 Septemberclaims.procedures@1.0.0
Request / data as of19 October 2026, 09:10 / 09:05 EDT; current source version confirmedclaims.claim-status@1.0.0, snapshot S-1042-0905
PurposeCase preparation; no decision or paymentRequest contract

Packet shown to E-17

C-1042: awaiting employer evidence. Current case events show the evidence request is open [status snapshot S-1042-0905]. The employee is the insured; the employer is the policyholder [relationship record R-1042]. Procedure version 5 applies to this product, region and loss date [procedure P-5]. Prior-claims history was not searched in this release.

The examiner verifies the packet and proceeds in the existing claims system. The packet gives no coverage recommendation and creates no internal note.

Part 6 of 10 · Implementation path

From request to cited summary.

  1. Verify the caller. Identity and assignment are checked before anything is retrieved.
  2. Resolve the context. Claim, roles, governing date and procedure version are fixed in a request record. Missing or contradictory values stop the request or ask the examiner to clarify.
  3. Retrieve within entitlement. Sources are filtered by the examiner’s permissions before the model sees them.
  4. Prepare. A fixed sequence of approved read tools assembles status, events within this case, parties and procedure. The assistant cites each source with its as-of time. Cross-case search and note tools are unavailable in runtime-v2.
  5. Present for review. The examiner sees the summary, the citations and anything withheld, with the reason.
  6. Record. The request record keeps the requester, sources, versions, policy decisions and result for later reconstruction.

The model sees a narrow context view. Credentials and the full protected record stay in the execution environment.

Part 7 of 10 · Failure cases

Four failures, and one case that should succeed.

F-01: employer offered as insuredContext role check asks for clarification; no preparation until authoritative mapping resolves the ambiguityREQ-F01: role mismatch, source and clarification; policy administration owner
F-02: version 4 still indexedApplicability filter excludes version 4 and returns permitted version 5 for the 6 October loss; if unavailable, withholdREQ-F02: excluded P-4, selected P-5 and dates; procedure owner removes stale index entry
F-03: E-17 assignment revokedFresh authorization denies source, tool and cache retrieval; no packetREQ-F03: policy version, denial and cache check; identity owner confirms expected denial
F-04: stale status / source unavailableAt 09:20, snapshot 09:00 cannot establish the 09:15 hold; withhold and route to manual preparationREQ-F04: watermark, source check and stop reason; claims data owner restores and validates source
F-05: permitted twin C-1042Valid assignment, resolved roles and current source checks return the packet in part 5REQ-C-1042-01: source refs, versions, policy allow and examiner acceptance; claims operations

The permitted twin matters. A test set that only proves refusals says nothing about whether the assistant is useful.

Part 8 of 10 · Acceptance evidence

The evidence that releases part of the scope and holds the rest.

This is a completed synthetic evidence record, not a test report from a running service. Thresholds were chosen for this example before its invented results. They are not universal release thresholds.

Candidate 1.0.0 fails: one of three trials on a same-employer fixture returns an unrelated employee’s claim. The first failing component is cross-case party resolution; the severity is critical. Hold the entire candidate. Excluding the feature in prose cannot make that candidate releasable.

For candidate 1.1.0, the technical owner removes the prior-claims route, credentials, index and cached outputs from the serving path. Independent review checks that direct, indirect and cached cross-case requests fail closed. Only then does a fresh held-out evaluation support the narrower decision.

evaluations/claims-context-v2

The synthetic retest uses 40 new, examiner-adjudicated fixtures: 30 permitted and 10 boundary/failure cases, each tried three times (120 trials). The boundary set extends F-01–F-04 with cross-case route, cache and dependency-outage checks; F-05 is the permitted pattern. These fixtures are distinct from 20 development examples and the timed replay. Expected outcomes belong to independent examiners, not the generating path. Repeat trials expose variation; this small constructed set cannot estimate rare-event safety.

Supporting facts, identity and applicable procedure: no critical error90 / 90 permitted trials; all source facts and versions supportedPass for assigned-case facts only
Packet usability rubric: at least 95%87 / 90 (96.7%); three citation-format defects, corrected before acceptancePass with tracked noncritical corrections; no unsupported fact accepted
Access, clarification, source failure and scope isolation: all required behaviors; no critical failure30 / 30 boundary trials; prior-claims retrieval unavailable on every tested pathPass for narrowed runtime; history remains held
Accepted preparation: median elapsed at most 45 minutes; correction share no worse than baselineTimed replay: 38 minutes; 4 / 40 corrected versus 8 / 40Pass for monitored rollout, including manual exceptions
Funded reviewer capacity: mean review at most 8 minutes per case240 / 40 = 6 minutes; 20 cases/day require 120 review + 40 exception minutesWithin 180 funded minutes/day; no expansion without new capacity evidence
Operator restriction and recovery without the builderDRILL-02: source disabled, packet withheld, manual route used, tested 1.1.0 configuration restoredSynthetic service-owner acceptance; rollout blocked without the real drill

Evidence index

evidence/claims-release-v2 binds the version record, BASE-01 timing and effort ledger, DEP-01 dependency acceptance, REQ-C-1042-01 allowed trace, REQ-F01–F04 clarification, correction, denial and stop records, the evaluation above, the failed 1.0.0 trial, isolation retest and DRILL-02. These names refer to the teaching records on this page; no hidden logs, executed test files or real signatures are implied.

Completed synthetic release decision

evidence/claims-release-v2 · 26 October 2026. Hold candidate 1.0.0 after an unrelated employee’s claim is returned. In the synthetic decision, accept 1.1.0 for a monitored team A rollout only after prior-claims history is disabled and the remaining scope passes a fresh evaluation.

Approved teaching scope: claims-context-assistant@1.1.0, releases/claims-runtime-v2, claims-case-prep-context-v1, policies/claims-read-v4 and the three 1.0.0 information products in the publication record. Maximum 20 eligible cases/day in the approved workbench, with examiner review on every packet and manual fallback. No prior-claims history, internal notes, case decisions, payments or customer contact.

Role sign-offs in this invented record: claims operations accepts the workflow and funds review; the independent claims/control reviewer accepts the narrowed evaluation and residual uncertainty; the service owner accepts DRILL-02 and recovery cover. None is a real approval. Review after 30 days, on 25 November 2026, or sooner on a critical failure, source/policy/version change or exhausted review capacity. Real release requires actual evidence and authorized sign-offs.

Part 9 of 10 · Operate and recover

Who watches it, and what happens when it breaks.

Signals and owners

Claims operations reviews accepted time, corrections, queue age and exception effort daily. The service owner monitors freshness, denials, trace completeness and cost. The benefit owner tracks assignment-to-supported decision time, with case mix recorded.

Restrict and recover

Any critical fact, access or procedure error stops the affected serving path immediately. If isolation is uncertain, stop the rollout. The service owner preserves protected evidence, routes work manually and retests before the claims owner permits resumption.

Change and retire

Source, procedure, model, context or policy changes trigger impact review and re-evaluation. Any rollback must preserve the history exclusion; failed candidate 1.0.0 is never a fallback. Retirement removes access, identities, indexes and caches while retaining evidence under the approved retention rules.

The operating team runs a restriction and a rollback on its own before release counts as handed over.

Part 10 of 10 · Economics and next commitment

What it costs, what it returns, and what you decide next.

Cost per accepted preparationAssume $30 usage/platform + $680 total workflow labor (680 minutes at $60/hour) + $90 support = $800 / 40 accepted preparations = $20. Include failed attempts and manual fallback costs; exclude one-time implementation cost here and budget it separately.
Released capacity(1,280 − 680) / 60 = 10 hours across 40 cases, including the increased review effort. Reassign to the backlog; this is capacity, not cash savings.
Review capacity at the rollout limit20 cases/day × 6 review minutes + 10% exceptions × 20 handling minutes = 160 minutes/day. Fund 180 productive minutes/day plus absence cover; pause intake when coverage is missing or queues exceed the agreed service limit.
Cash or service benefitNo cash saving or improved claims outcome established. Claims operations owns the 30-day observation and realization decision.

Next commitment: fund the bounded observation period, not team B or prior-claims history. At the review, proceed only with observed quality, manageable effort and a credible service benefit; reshape if exceptions consume the capacity; stop if the operating case fails. Internal-note drafting or writing requires a separate scope and decision.

Apply this to your workflow

Write your workflow ID and version, current and target steps, eligible population, scope exclusions, dependency owners and failure behavior. Then specify the timing window, acceptance definition, correction/exception measures, independent expected outcomes, release thresholds, decision owner and review date before collecting results. Replace every synthetic figure with your own evidence.

Acceptance check: can a reviewer trace each release condition to a versioned dependency and evaluation record, reproduce the effort denominator, and identify what is held? If any link is missing, the brief is incomplete.

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