5 Checks Before You Send Any AI-Written Email
The result first: one smooth, professional, AI-written client status email — and hidden inside it, a total that costs $100 extra, a Thursday called "Tuesday", and a 40% claim with no source behind it. Nothing about the writing warned you. These 5 checks are how you catch what the AI missed, in about a minute, before the email leaves your outbox — on any email, report or proposal.
The problem: polish switches off your checking
AI drafts read clean, so your brain skims them like finished work. But the AI produced that polish by predicting text — it never added up the figures, never opened a calendar, and never asked whether the claim it wrote has a source. The errors that survive are exactly the ones a reader trusts the polished surface not to contain. The fix is a short, fixed checklist — the same five checks, every time, in this order.
Check 1 — Numbers: recompute every total
Add up every total yourself, and check every percentage. In the video's demo email, the figures simply did not add up — the draft overstated the cost by $100, and the on-screen checklist flagged the email's "$5,325 total?" for exactly that reason. AI models regularly produce totals that look computed and are not. If a number matters, it gets recomputed — no exceptions for tidy formatting.
Check 2 — Names & dates: spellings consistent, weekdays true
List every name and check the spelling is the same everywhere it appears. Then check every date's weekday against a real calendar. The demo email called a Thursday "Tuesday" — a mistake no spellchecker will ever catch, and the kind a client notices on a call. Dates, deadlines and weekdays are facts; verify them like facts.
Check 3 — Sources: every claim backed, softened, or cut
List every claim that needs a source, and mark any that has none. The demo hid a 40% figure with nothing behind it. Your options for an unsourced claim are only three: back it with the source, soften it into something you can defend, or cut it. Sending it as-is is not the fourth option.
Check 4 — What's missing: the decision, asked out loud, with a deadline
Ask of the draft: does it clearly ask for one decision, and does it give a deadline? Status emails fail silently here — everything is reported, nothing is requested, and the project stalls politely. If the ask or the date is missing, that absence is the finding.
Check 5 — Tone: first line and last line, read aloud
Read the first line and the last line out loud. Those two lines set how the whole message lands. Quote to yourself any line that sounds too casual, vague or sharp for the actual reader — the demo's polish hid tone problems in exactly those positions.
The copy-paste self-check prompt
You can also make the AI do the first sweep. Paste your draft into any mainstream AI chat with this prompt — it is deliberately written to make the AI report, not rewrite:
Here is an email I am about to send. Do not rewrite it. Check it like an editor, in these five areas, and report only problems. One: add up every total and check every percentage — show your arithmetic. Two: list every name, check the spelling is consistent, and check every date's weekday against the calendar. Three: list every claim that needs a source, and mark any with no source given. Four: say whether the email clearly asks for one decision and gives a deadline — if not, say what is missing. Five: quote any line that sounds too casual or unclear for the reader. Report only. Do not change anything.
Treat its report as a first sweep, not a verdict — then make the fixes yourself, and still run the final pass below.
The 60-second final pass
- Numbers — recompute every total.
- Names & dates — spellings consistent, weekdays true.
- Sources — every claim backed, softened, or cut.
- What's missing — the decision, asked out loud, with a deadline.
- Tone — first line and last line, read aloud.
Five checks, one minute, on anything AI wrote before it goes out under your name.
Common mistakes
- Asking the AI to "fix" the draft instead of report on it. A rewrite buries the problems under new polish. Report first, fix yourself, then re-check.
- Trusting the self-check as a verdict. The same kind of model that wrote the errors is doing the checking — it is a sweep, and your eyes are the final pass.
- Checking style but not arithmetic. The expensive errors are numeric and factual, not grammatical.
- Skipping the "what's missing" check. An email can be flawless line by line and still fail, because it never asks for the decision it exists to get.
FAQ
Why not just ask the AI to check itself?
You can — the prompt above does exactly that — but as a first sweep only. The model reports what it can see; it can also miss its own patterns. Your 60-second pass is the check that counts.
Does this work for reports and proposals, not just email?
Yes. The five checks are about the document, not the format: totals, names and dates, sources, the missing ask, and tone apply to any AI-written text you are about to send.
Which check catches the most damage?
In the demo, the numbers check — a wrong total is the error a client acts on. In everyday work, the "what's missing" check is the quiet one: drafts that never ask for a decision waste more time than drafts with typos.
Why "report only, do not rewrite" in the prompt?
Because a rewrite hides the evidence. You want the list of problems in plain sight first, so you decide what changes — and so the next draft you write starts cleaner.