How to Write a One-Page AI Strategy (Free Template)

You probably don't have an AI strategy. You have a tool list.

Claude for writing. Midjourney for social images. An AI scheduler you found in my newsletter. Each one showed up as its own little decision, no connection to the others, no owner, no quality bar, no cap on spend, and no clear answer to what problem it was even supposed to solve.

Ask your business owner friends what their AI strategy is and you'll usually hear a list of tools. Ask who owns each workflow and you get a pause. Ask what they won't do with AI and you get a longer one. Maybe that's you.

Write it down on a single page. This is your AI one-pager: seven sections, one 90-minute sitting. Steal the template below.

The seven sections

Section 1: What we're trying to accomplish (2–3 sentences)

The business result AI is supposed to drive. "Use AI more" doesn't count. Name the actual outcome you're after.

Examples:

• "Reduce time-to-first-response on customer support inquiries from 8 hours to under 2 hours, without adding headcount."
• "Increase the volume of marketing content we ship per week from two pieces to six, while keeping editorial quality at or above current levels."
• "Free up the operations lead's calendar by 10 hours a week so she can focus on the new product launch in Q3."

Specific, measurable, time-bound. If you can't write a goal you'd be embarrassed to miss, you don't have one yet.

Section 2: Where AI fits: three workflows, named (a short list)

Pick three workflows where you'll put AI to work in the next 90 days. Cap it at three. Four is too many to do well in a single quarter.

Each workflow gets:

• Name: "Customer support first-draft responses"
• Owner: "Maria"
• Tool: "Claude project, custom prompt, integrated via Zapier"
• Output volume target: "Every inbound support ticket gets an AI-drafted reply within 30 minutes; Maria reviews and sends. AI takes the drafting off her plate; the call on what goes out stays hers."

Skip the paragraph of context. That detail lives in the workflow's own doc. The strategy page just lists the three.

Section 3: Tools selected (a short list)

The tools you're committing to for the next 90 days. Name each one, and say what it's for.

Example:

• Claude Sonnet: drafting and analysis
• Cursor: internal tooling and prompt iteration
• Otter.ai: meeting transcription
• Zapier: workflow integration

Don't list every tool you're kicking the tires on. If you haven't committed to it, keep it off the page. The ones you're still testing live somewhere else.

Section 4: Quality standards (3–5 bullets)

The bar AI output has to clear before it goes out the door. Most people barely write this section. It's the one that guards your brand.

Examples:

• "All customer-facing AI output is reviewed by a human before sending."
• "All published content passes a voice match score of 80 or higher."
• "AI-generated images are reviewed against the brand color palette before posting."
• "Internal-only output (summaries, drafts, internal notes) doesn't require review."
• "Anything tied to legal, compliance, or financial accuracy is reviewed by the relevant subject matter owner."

Now anyone can answer "is this okay to send?" without calling a meeting every time.

Section 5: Budget cap (2 numbers)

What you'll spend on AI tools and workflows over the next 90 days. A hard cap.

Two numbers:

• Monthly tool subscriptions: $X
• Per-call API spend: $Y

Set the cap and your team can experiment right up to the limit without asking you first. Leave it open and the spend creeps until it surprises you at the quarterly review.

Starting out, your caps are probably smaller than you'd guess: $200–500/month in subscriptions, $50/month in API usage. Give it a quarter and you'll know whether to raise them.

Section 6: Review cadence (1 sentence)

Quarterly. Monthly is too soon; your workflows haven't had time to settle. Yearly is too slow; the tools and your business both move fast.

Put one hour on the calendar every 90 days. Pull up the page, check the workflows, update the tool list, decide what's next.

Write it like this: "Reviewed quarterly. Next review: [specific date]."

Section 7: Red lines, what we won't do (3–5 bullets)

The most important section on the page. Most people skip it entirely.

Here's where you write down what you won't use AI for, no matter how good the pitch sounds. Your red lines.

Examples:

• "We won't use AI for direct outreach to our top 20 clients."
• "We won't use AI to generate our brand voice from scratch; we anchor against our existing corpus."
• "We won't ship AI-generated content without an editor reviewing it."
• "We won't deploy autonomous AI agents that take customer-facing actions without human approval."
• "We won't subscribe to any AI tool without a defined 30-day success criterion."

Your red lines cover you for the next ten vendor pitches that show up sideways. When someone pitches "fully autonomous customer outreach," you don't argue it out. You point at the page. The answer's already written.

Write your red lines well and the rest of your strategy gets tighter on its own. The limits do the work for you.

The rules that keep it on one page

Rule 1. Keep it to one page. If it doesn't fit on a single sheet at a readable font size, you're not done editing. Cut, combine, or push the detail into supporting docs.

Rule 2. No section runs past five bullets or three sentences. That's what keeps you honest. If you can't say it in five bullets, you don't really know what you mean yet.

Rule 3. Every workflow has an owner, every tool has a purpose, every red line is concrete. "We will be thoughtful about AI" won't hold up. "We won't use AI for top-20 client outreach" will.

The format

Use this as your template.

[BUSINESS NAME] — AI STRATEGY · Q[X] 20[XX]

GOAL
[2–3 sentences. The business outcome AI serves.]

WORKFLOWS (3)
1. [Workflow name] — owner: [name], tool: [tool], target: [output volume]
2. [Workflow name] — owner: [name], tool: [tool], target: [output volume]
3. [Workflow name] — owner: [name], tool: [tool], target: [output volume]

TOOLS
- [Tool] — [purpose]
- [Tool] — [purpose]
- [Tool] — [purpose]
- [Tool] — [purpose]

QUALITY STANDARDS
- [Standard]
- [Standard]
- [Standard]

BUDGET CAP
- Subscriptions: $[X]/mo
- API/per-call: $[Y]/mo

REVIEW
Quarterly. Next review: [date].

RED LINES
- We will not [specific action].
- We will not [specific action].
- We will not [specific action].

You can fill this in during one 90-minute sitting. Once it's written, every tool has a reason to exist, every workflow has an owner, and anyone on your team can answer the same three questions the same way. What are we doing with AI? Who owns it? What won't we do?

Keep it to one page and check it every quarter. The one-page limit is the whole trick. It forces you to name the busywork AI should take off your team's plate, so their hours go to the work that needs a human.

Try it yourself

The widget below is that template, live. Every field is editable. Swap in your own answers over ours, then copy the whole thing as plain text. We seeded it with our real one-pager so you can see what a filled-in version actually looks like.