A consulting deliverable should not ship until a partner has read it. When an agent drafts the first pass from engagement notes in Notion, research in Google Drive, and a slide skeleton in Pitch, partner review is the only thing standing between draft and client. Dock is where that review lives, and where the audit trail stays attached to the deliverable. The agent drafts. The partner approves. Platforms store the file. Dock stores the decision.
Notion, Google Workspace, and Pitch stay the system of record for the raw data. Dock is the system of record for what the agent interprets. Each Dock row carries a pointer back to the platform record, agent identity, decision, reviewer, and timestamp. The agent re-fetches platform data via fresh API reads when it needs current state.
The Deliverables surface
| Engagement | Artifact | Platform | Agent draft | Partner | Status | Sent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acme operating model | Phase 1 findings memo | Google Doc | Echo, v3 | Priya | Approved 2026-05-29 | Yes |
| Riverbed market entry | Sizing deck, 14 slides | Pitch | Echo, v2 | Daniel | Changes requested | No |
| Northwind diligence | Red-flag log | Notion DB | Echo, v1 | Priya | In partner review | No |
Each row points to the Notion workspace, Drive folder, or Pitch deck. The partner sees the draft, the agent reasoning, and source pulls inline. Approval flips status and stamps the partner name on the artifact.
Workflow: notes to deliverable to partner approval
- Engagement manager tags a Notion page
ready-for-draft. The agent reads the page, linked Drive research, and the engagement brief. - The agent drafts the memo or builds the deck in Pitch using the firm template. It writes a Dock row with the artifact link, citations, and rationale per section.
- The partner opens the Dock row, reads the rationale, and either approves or returns it with margin comments referencing Dock row IDs.
- On approval, Dock stamps the partner identity and revision number onto the artifact. Send-to-client is gated on this stamp.
- If a client later asks who wrote a paragraph, the firm queries Dock by artifact ID and returns the answer in one row.
Why it matters
Consulting firms sell judgment. When agents write first drafts, the question clients ask is who reviewed the judgment before it shipped. Source Global Research, which tracks the professional services market, finds that perceived rigor of deliverables drives repeat work more than price. A workflow with no attributed review breaks that. Dock keeps the partner in the loop and the audit trail durable across staff turnover. See related patterns in Dock for consulting and agencies, the research workflow, and the design handoff for visual deliverables.
The same pattern shows up in agent identity: the agent has a name, the partner has a name, the artifact carries both. For regulated work, agent audit and compliance is the record that matters in a dispute, and the upstream research surface feeds the drafting agent its citations.
Try the workflow on one engagement. Pick a memo shipping next week and run it through Dock end to end.
FAQ
Does the agent edit the Pitch deck directly, or just propose changes? It edits directly using the Pitch API, but every edit writes a Dock row with the before-and-after. The partner sees both before approving.
What if the partner is offline when the draft is ready?
Dock holds the artifact in awaiting partner status. Nothing sends to the client. A second partner can approve if the engagement letter allows substitution, and that substitution is logged.
How does the firm prove a specific partner approved a specific version? Dock stores the partner identity, the artifact hash, and the timestamp on the approval row. Consultancy.org coverage of governance practices in the global consulting industry shows this kind of versioned approval is becoming a standard ask in master service agreements.
Can the agent draft without partner pre-briefing? Yes for internal artifacts. Client-facing artifacts require a partner-signed engagement brief in Dock before the agent will draft. The check is enforced at the workflow level, not by the agent.
