The fundamental problem with modern AI workflows isn’t the model—it’s the lack of explainability.
When developers or business units prompt an AI tool, they get a result. But when another team member asks, “How did you get that?” or tries to replicate the output, the process breaks down.
To make AI work communicable, reproducible, and transferable across teams, enterprise architects must adopt Application Profiles.
Originally developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), an application profile functions as a standardized creative brief for software interaction:
- Stating the brief: Documenting the explicit requirements, operational context, and business intent before prompting.
- Reusing persistent schemas: Borrowing existing, standardized data dictionaries and URIs rather than creating terminology from scratch.
- Human-to-human explainability: Creating a package of requirements so another professional can evaluate, validate, and continue the work.
Stop treating AI prompts like ad-hoc magic tricks.
Document the business logic behind the interaction.
Are you struggling to standardize AI documentation across your team? Drop me a message, and I’ll share how we structure application profile briefs.
– Joseph Busch
#W3C #ApplicationProfiles #InformationArchitecture #SystemsEngineering #DataGovernance