Why Decision Records matter when conditions change

A record is how you reconstruct, on a given Tuesday, why authority still holds. Memory and minutes are not enough.

18 August 2026 · 6 min read

When something goes wrong, organisations reach for email, slide decks and the person who 'was in the room'. That is not reconstructability. A Decision Record is the minimum object that can be shown to an owner, an auditor, a board or a counterparty: objective, evidence, boundary, owner, conditions, state, last assessed.

From the sources

Source finding

McKinsey's agent-trust work lists reconstructability alongside inventory and ownership. Reuters' September 2026 reporting on vendor disclosure frameworks is about what a provider will say after unexpected behaviour. A customer still needs its own record of what it allowed.

Solarascope analysis

If you cannot produce the record, you cannot prove the grant. If you cannot date the evidence, you cannot prove it still applies. That is the whole product, stated plainly.

Sources

McKinsey. Trust in the age of agents (2026)
Reuters. OpenAI plans regular reports on unexpected AI behavior (16 September 2026)