# Instructions: the ten steps

Version 2026-09-15-v1. Part of the Mortgage AI Starter Kit from Leaf360.

Read this once before you paste anything. Each step says what to do, what to expect, and whose job it usually is on a mortgage team. The roles are suggestions for a practice run; use your own.

## Who does what

| Role | Your job in this kit |
|---|---|
| Loan officer | Decide. Read the follow-up queue, edit or reject the borrower draft, and decide which duplicate is the real contact. Nothing goes out without you. |
| Loan officer assistant | Run it. Upload the file, paste the prompt, answer the setup questions, and hand the table and drafts to the loan officer with the exception list on top. |
| Processor | Resolve conflicts. Check the conflicting statuses and closing dates against the file of record and write down which source wins and why. |
| Branch manager | Review weekly. Read the exception list, confirm each task has an owner, and confirm nobody merged two records to make the list shorter. |
| Owner | Set the rules first. Which assistant and plan your company uses, what its data settings are, what may be pasted into it, and the rule that nothing is written to the CRM or sent to a client without a person's review. |

## Step 1. Outcome

You will produce four things: a contact table that keeps every ID as its own row, a suggested follow-up queue with a proposed owner per task, two unsent drafts, and a list of facts a person has to check. If the assistant produces anything else, such as a merged list or a sent message, the run is wrong.

## Step 2. Boundaries

Before you paste any data, the prompt asks the assistant to ask you five things: your role, your business goal for this list, which assistant you are using, which data sources you have approved, and the output format you want. Answer them. If you skip them the assistant will guess, and guessing is the failure this kit exists to catch.

Prohibited in every run: connecting an account, changing a record, creating a task in any system, sending a message, or inventing consent, status, rates, approvals, deadlines or relationships.

## Step 3. Field map

The practice file has ten columns.

| Column | Meaning | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| `contact_id` | The record's identity. | Never dropped, never merged. |
| `possible_match_group` | Two rows share a group when they might be the same person. | A flag for a person to check, never permission to merge. |
| `name`, `role`, `status` | Who they are and where they stand. | Role is one of Borrower, Prospect, Referral Partner, Service Provider. |
| `last_contact_date`, `proposed_closing_date` | Dates as recorded. | Two rows can disagree. Report both; do not pick one. |
| `notes` | Free text as recorded. | A note is a fact about the note, not a verified fact about the person. |
| `phone`, `email` | Contact fields. | Blank stays blank. |

## Step 4. Record handling

Keep every ID as a separate row. When two rows share a possible-match group, list both, say what matches (name, phone, email) and what does not (status, dates), and state that a person must confirm they are the same contact before anything is merged. In the practice file MARIA-01 and DAVID-01 are the two groups.

## Step 5. Follow-up queue

A task is a suggestion built only from the supplied facts, with a proposed owner. It is not a CRM write. Good tasks in the practice file: review the two Maria rows, verify the two David dates against the file, identify the unnamed C-010 before any outreach, and decide the approved contact route for C-002, who has no phone number.

## Step 6. Borrower draft

Draft from one clean, unambiguous borrower row. In the practice file that is C-011, Elena Park, in Processing. The draft may use her name and her status. It may not promise a closing date, a rate, an approval, or a follow-up commitment, and it may not claim consent that the file does not record. It stays unsent.

## Step 7. Referral-partner draft

Use only the facts attached to that partner. C-004, Priya Nair, is an active real estate agent whose notes mention two to three leads a month. No borrower or file in the practice data is tied to her, so the draft may not mention a referred borrower or a file. It stays unsent.

## Step 8. Exception review

Before any draft is used, read the exceptions: conflicting statuses (C-001 versus C-003), conflicting closing dates with one source marked unverified (C-007 versus C-009), missing fields (C-002 phone and last contact, C-005 email, C-010 name and email), and a consent question (C-011). The processor resolves the date and status conflicts against the file of record. The loan officer decides the rest.

## Step 9. Answer-key check

Compare every statement in the output with its input row. Confirm all eleven IDs are present, both match groups are flagged and unmerged, both David dates are reported without a winner, no task or message was created or sent, and nothing was invented. The full checklist is in `example-output.md`.

## Step 10. Optional Leaf360 path

When you are ready to work in an authorized Leaf360 demo or account, start with a bounded read such as one loan or one lead plus the total count. Confirm the workspace and the returned record before requesting any write. In Leaf360's own demo verification on 15 September 2026, those two bounded reads succeeded, and a separately authorized test created one demo task, read it back as pending, completed it, and read it back as completed. Nothing else in this kit was run against Leaf360, and none of the prompt ideas on the MCP page were part of that test.

Setup: https://www.leaf360.com/mcp

## Before you use real data

Practice with the fictional file first. Before you paste a real contact list into any assistant, read `assistant-setup.md` for each assistant's data settings, follow your company's policy, and treat borrower information as confidential. This kit is not legal advice.