veripath/docs/operations/client-intake-audit-alignment.md

Client Intake ↔ Audit Record Alignment Directive

Status: Active
Created: 2026-08-11
Purpose: Ensure every data point captured during an audit maps cleanly and identically into the client intake form / Google Sheet structure, and that human verification is required wherever automation is unreliable or judgment is needed.

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Core Principle

The Google Sheet (or future intake form) is the operational front door.
Gitea is the versioned source of truth.

Every field we capture in an audit must either:

1. Map directly to a column in the Clients intake sheet, or
2. Be stored in a structured raw/analysis file in the client’s Gitea repo that can later feed the intake or reports.

No orphan data. No free-form notes that cannot be traced back to a required field.

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Required Intake Fields (must stay in sync)

These columns in the Clients Google Sheet are the minimum contract:

Field	Required	Notes
Client ID	Yes	e.g. VP-001
Business Name	Yes	Exact string
Website	Yes	Canonical URL
Primary Address	Yes	Street + Suite
City	Yes
State	Yes
Phone	Yes	Full digits preferred
Contact Email	Yes
Primary Category	Yes
Main Services	Yes	High-level list
Competitors	Preferred
Intake Date	Yes
Last Audit Date	Yes (after first audit)
Next Review Date	Yes (after first audit)
Status	Yes	Controlled vocabulary
Ground Truth Score	After audit	Human judgment
AI Visibility Summary	After interrogation
Priority Issues	After analysis
Report Link	When report exists
Notes	Optional
Last Updated	Yes

Any new field added to the Sheet must be reflected here and in the relevant Gitea templates.

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Human Verification Rules

Human eyes are mandatory before a data point is marked as Ground Truth when any of the following are true:

• Sources conflict (e.g. website hours ≠ Yelp hours ≠ Google hours)
• The value is subjective or requires judgment (score, priority, tone, quality)
• Automation/scraping is known to be unreliable for that source
• The field affects client-facing recommendations or remediation
• The data will be used to generate schema, GBP rewrites, or reports

Status vocabulary for raw captures (already in use):

• NOT_PRESENT — looked and confirmed absent
• NOT_OBSERVED — did not look or could not see
• Unknown — looked but signal is ambiguous
• Concrete observed value

Agents may propose values. Humans must approve before the value is written as final Ground Truth into the client repo or the intake Sheet.

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Process Flow (current simple version)

1. Intake → Client row created in Google Sheet (manual or form)
2. Raw capture → Structured snapshots written to the client’s Gitea repo (raw/)
3. Human review → Conflicts resolved, scores assigned, priority issues named
4. Ground Truth locked → Clean values promoted to the intake Sheet + analysis files
5. Remediation / Report → Generated only from locked Ground Truth

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Hermes / Agent Role

Agents (including any future Hermes Office suite capabilities) may:

• Pull and structure public data
• Fill draft templates
• Flag conflicts
• Propose values

Agents may not:

• Mark a conflicting or judgment-based field as final Ground Truth without human confirmation
• Write directly to the live client intake Sheet without an explicit approval step

If Hermes Office suite later gains reliable form-filling ability, it must still respect the human-verification gate defined above.

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Immediate Next Actions

• Keep the Clients Google Sheet columns as the source of the field contract
• Continue walking Phoenix Salon + Spa using this alignment
• After each major section is human-verified, write the clean record into client-data-pss
• Update this directive if new required fields are added

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This directive supersedes informal process notes for client intake and audit record structure.