How I Write an SOP in 20 Minutes With AI

Most standard operating procedures never get written. Not because they are hard, but because sitting down to document a task you already know how to do feels like unpaid homework.

I stopped writing SOPs from scratch about a year ago. Now I narrate the task once and let AI do the formatting. It takes about twenty minutes per procedure and the result is good enough to hand to someone else.

Step 1 — Do the task and talk through it

Open a voice memo or a dictation box and run the task the way you normally do. Say every step out loud, including the ones that feel obvious: which tab you open, what you name the file, what you check before you hit send.

Do not organise as you go. Rambling is fine. You are producing raw material, not a document.

Step 2 — Paste the transcript in with a shaping prompt

This is the prompt I use, unchanged:

Below is a raw transcript of me performing a task. Turn it into a standard operating procedure for someone who has never done it. Use numbered steps. Each step should state the action, the tool used, and the condition that tells the person the step is done. Flag anything ambiguous in a section called "Needs a decision" instead of guessing.

That last sentence is the one that matters. Without it the model invents plausible-sounding steps to fill gaps, and you will not notice until someone follows them.

Step 3 — Answer the "Needs a decision" list yourself

This is the only part that requires you. Usually it is three or four items: which account to use, what counts as good enough, who to escalate to. Answer them in plain language and paste the answers back in with "fold these into the relevant steps."

Step 4 — Run the SOP once, cold

Follow your own document literally, doing nothing from memory. Every place you have to improvise is a missing step. Fix those and you are done.

What AI still gets wrong

It writes confident steps for things it cannot know — your tool settings, your naming conventions, your thresholds. It also over-explains. I cut roughly a third of every draft.

What it does well is structure, ordering, and never getting bored halfway through.

Where this fits

An SOP is only worth writing for something you will do more than three times. For everything else, a checklist in a note is enough.

If you want the prompts and the one-page checklist I use for this and the rest of my weekly operating routine, the free AI Business Starter Kit has them: get the free Starter Kit.