Before automating, do it once
A manual pass can reveal the decisions hidden inside a repetitive task.
Sample text for the reading-page design. This is not a published article by Anh.
A task can sound repetitive until someone tries to write down its steps. Collect the files, clean the information, and save the result. Each phrase can hide decisions that are easy to overlook.
Walking through one example is a way to find those decisions. Which file counts as the latest version? What happens when a field is blank? Is an unexpected value a mistake or something worth preserving?
Write down the pauses
The useful notes are often the moments when the work stops. A filename needs interpretation. Two records disagree. A result looks plausible but needs a second look. These pauses show where a workflow needs an explicit rule or a person to make a decision.
The point is not to make the manual process perfect. It is to gather a small example that exposes the shape of the work, including the inconvenient parts.
A pause in the manual process is a question the automation will eventually have to answer.
Keep the example
Save the input and the expected result together. They give the first automated version something concrete to reproduce. When a new case behaves differently, add it to the collection instead of quietly changing the original example.
That leaves a record of what the workflow is meant to handle. It also makes it easier to explain which decisions still belong to a person.