Practical templates to operationalize context governance. The goal is to make governance repeatable, not bespoke.
Key Takeaways
- • Governance works when onboarding is standardized.
- • Templates create consistency across domains and teams.
- • “Definition of done” for AI context is measurable.
Context source onboarding checklist
A source is not eligible for production AI until:
Ownership & Metadata
- □ Owner and backup owner defined
- □ Domain and Classification assigned
- □ Update cadence and Retention defined
Security & Ops
- □ Access policy defined (RBAC/ABAC)
- □ Monitoring for ingestion failures
- □ Rollback plan for bad updates
Data product as AI context checklist
- • Semantics documented (definitions, grain)
- • Freshness SLA defined
- • Quality tests (completeness, validity)
- • Row and column-level rules defined
- • Approved query patterns defined
- • Change management (versioning)
Retrieval policy template
Policy Name: _________________
User Roles: _________________
Allowed Domains: _____________
Max Classification: __________
Tool Access: _______________
Tool permission template
Tool Name: ___________________
Purpose: _____________________
Inputs Schema: _______________
Outputs Class: _______________
Rate Limit: __________________
Evaluation harness checklist
Dataset
20-50 golden questions
Ground Truth
Expected sources per query
Metrics
Accuracy, Citations, Refusal
Triggers
Index, Policy, or Prompt changes
Failure modes
- ! Ad hoc onboarding allows sources to enter production without ownership or classification.
- ! Templates exist but are not enforced, leading to inconsistent metadata across teams.
- ! Static evaluation datasets fail to detect regressions after index or prompt changes.
- ! Skipping change management under time pressure causes silent behavior changes.
- ! Lack of a rollback procedure prevents quick reversal of bad source updates.
Change management
- → Index and source versions are explicit.
- → Breaking changes require a deprecation window.
- → Rollback procedure exists (revert index, revert source set).
- → Major changes require sign-off from domain owner and governance.