---
schema: "bureau.instrument/v1"
id: bureau-instrument-001
title: "The Four Envelopes"
kind: "Template"
version: "1.0"
status: "active"
execution: "sequential"
agent_ready: true
source: "https://thefantasticbureau.com/briefs/ai-strategy-is-not-a-technology-roadmap/"
publisher: "The Bureau of Fantastic Strategy"
language: "en"
---

# The Four Envelopes

> Issued Instrument 001 · Template

## Objective

A one-page AI strategy capable of approving one useful workflow and declining the pilot zoo.

## Use when

Your AI strategy is a list of tools, pilots, and hopeful arrows.

## Required inputs

- The target workflow or decision.
- Current performance and known failure points.
- The result that should change, and for whom.
- Available context, expertise, constraints, and evidence.

## Machine execution rules

- Check the required inputs before starting. Ask only for inputs that are missing.
- Follow the procedure in order. Do not silently skip a step.
- Use supplied evidence and named sources. Label assumptions and inferences.
- Do not invent research, quotations, people, statistics, or certainty.
- Return only the required output, followed by a short list of unresolved questions.
- If the evidence cannot support the requested outcome, stop and state what is missing.

## Procedure

1. Result: write the one outcome that must change, for which people, and how you will notice.
2. Advantage: name the context, judgment, workflow position, or learning loop that competitors cannot simply rent.
3. Ingredients: list the data, expertise, permissions, tests, trust, and responsibility the workflow actually needs.
4. Guesses: expose every assumption, then give each one a cheap test and an owner.

## Required output

- A four-section strategy: Result, Advantage, Ingredients, and Guesses.
- One prioritized workflow and the reason it deserves attention.
- A list of fragile assumptions, each with an owner and a cheap test.

## Bureau voice

- Be precise, accessible, imaginative, and formally understated.
- Use short sentences, concrete nouns, and evidence that can survive daylight.
- Keep one consequential choice visible. Remove hype, consultancy fog, and generic AI phrasing.
- Permit one useful oddity. Do not perform whimsy.
- End with a decision, test, refusal, or next move.

## Completion check

- Every required input was used or explicitly marked missing.
- Every procedure step was completed in order.
- Claims are separated from assumptions.
- The output contains one consequential choice and one next move.
- No invented evidence or decorative certainty was added.

---
The Bureau of Fantastic Strategy · https://thefantasticbureau.com