Describe the end-to-end flow
Walk through, in plain terms, how a committee overlay decision moves from proposal to capture to propagation to audit — and what fails when any step is skipped.
Advanced training
Committee Decision Flow and Overlay Propagation
One human decision, six downstream systems, zero re-entry. How a committee overlay change gets captured, propagated, and audited — and why the audit trail is the thing that makes the whole flow defensible.
Start here
What you'll be able to do after this lesson
Identify every downstream surface
Name every system that has to be updated when an overlay changes — the guidelines engine, the LOS, the rate sheet, training, customer collateral, and the audit log.
Trace the audit trail
Explain how an auditor reconstructs a change from the system back to the committee decision — and why "reconstructable in one query" is the design target.
Three flow ideas
Capture, propagate, audit
Decision capture
The committee makes the call, and the call gets recorded in a structured, machine-readable format — product, criterion, change, rationale, effective date, decision ID. Capture is what turns a meeting into a system change.
Propagation
The captured decision is pushed — by agents, not people — to every downstream surface that needs to know. The engine, the LOS, the rate sheet, training materials, customer-facing collateral. No human re-entry.
Audit trail
Every change to every system carries the decision ID back to the committee record. Reconstructable, traceable, defensible. The audit trail is the thing that makes the whole flow safe to automate.
Trainer note: The win is not the AI making the decision. The win is the AI moving the
human decision — instantly, completely, and traceably — through every system. The human owns the
call; the agent owns the propagation.
Where the work happens
Three layers, one decision flow
The committee meeting
Where the decision is made and captured. The meeting output is a structured decision record — not minutes, not an email recap. The capture format is what makes the rest of the flow possible.
The decisionThe agent layer
Where the change propagates. Agents read the structured decision, identify every downstream surface that needs updating, and execute the updates — with the decision ID embedded in every change.
The propagationDownstream systems
LOS, rate sheet, guidelines engine, training materials, customer-facing collateral, audit log. Every system that has to know about the change. Each one updated, dated, and tied back to the decision.
The reachWorking inside the flow
Five rules that keep the flow honest
Capture the decision in the structured format
Product, criterion, change, rationale, effective date, decision ID. If the committee decision can't be written in that format, it isn't ready to propagate — it's still a discussion.
Never let an overlay change skip the agent flow
Direct edits to the engine, the LOS, or the rate sheet — without going through capture and propagation — break the audit trail. The shortcut today is the audit failure next quarter.
Treat the audit trail as the source of truth
Disagreements about "what did we decide?" get resolved by reading the captured decision and the propagation log — not by reconstructing memory from the meeting.
Escalate decisions that don't fit the format
If a decision is conditional, multi-stage, or doesn't map cleanly to the capture template, that's a signal — escalate before propagating. Don't force-fit a non-fitting decision.
Never edit downstream surfaces directly
Even when it's tempting. Especially when it's tempting. The audit log only works if every change carries a decision ID — and a direct edit doesn't.
Prompt upgrade
Weak prompt
We decided in committee yesterday to tighten gift funds at 95%+ LTV. Sarah, let the LOs know; Mike, update the engine when you can.
Flow-ready prompt
Structured decision
Decision ID: OVR-2026-007 · Product: Conventional, 95%+ LTV · Change: Cap gift funds at 50% of down payment (was: no cap) · Rationale: Risk-weighted file data shows higher default on >50% gift-funded loans · Effective: 2026-04-01 · Committee approval: 2026-03-15 · Propagate to: Guidelines Engine, LOS, Rate Sheet, Training, Customer Collateral, Audit Log.
Best patterns
Four flow types worth designing for
New overlay
A new restriction or condition the committee adds. The most common flow type — and the one where the structured-capture habit pays off most.
Retire-an-overlay
An old restriction the committee decides is no longer needed. Often skipped or done informally — which is exactly why the audit trail breaks. Retirement deserves the same flow as creation.
Modify-an-existing-overlay
The most error-prone flow — partial updates where one surface gets the change and another doesn't. The propagation map exists to make this kind of partial update impossible.
Emergency rapid change
Rate volatility, agency announcement, regulatory deadline. Fast flow — same capture format, same propagation, just compressed timing. Speed is no excuse for breaking the audit trail.
Flow checks
Five things to verify on every committee change
Employee rule: A propagation that touches five surfaces and misses one is a regulatory
gap — and a regulatory gap is what auditors are paid to find. The check isn't "did most surfaces
update?" It's "did every surface update with the decision ID?"
Walk a change through the system
Six exercises to build flow fluency
Use real committee decisions where you can. The habit is forged on real changes, not hypothetical ones.
- Open the propagation map in this lesson. Click each downstream surface and read what the agent does there. Note the decision-ID reference in every audit entry.
- Capture a sample committee decision in the structured format — product, criterion, change, rationale, effective date, decision ID. Compare it to how the same decision would have been emailed.
- Trace one real historical change through every downstream surface. Note where the trace is clean and where it gets murky.
- Draft a rapid-change playbook for an emergency rate volatility scenario — same capture format, compressed timeline, same audit standard.
- Identify one downstream surface that is not yet on the agent flow. Propose its integration: what change it would consume, what audit entry it would generate.
- Audit one historical change end-to-end. Confirm every surface updated. Note any gaps — those are the actual training data for improving the flow.
Completion standard
You've finished this module when you can name every downstream surface a committee decision touches, capture a decision in the structured format on the first try, and read an audit-trail entry back to its committee record in under thirty seconds.