The automation handoff document nobody writes

An automation built by one person, understood only by that person, works fine right up until that person is unavailable, whether that's a vacation, a role change, or leaving the company entirely, and then the business discovers it has a critical workflow nobody else can debug, modify, or even fully explain.

The handoff document that prevents this doesn't need to be extensive: what triggers the workflow, what each step does in plain language, what the failure modes look like and what to do about them, and where the credentials and configuration actually live. Most of this fits on a single page, and most automations don't have even that.

The resistance to writing it is usually time pressure at build time, documentation feels like the thing to do later, after the workflow is proven. The businesses that actually write it treat the handoff document as part of the definition of done, not an optional follow-up task that quietly never happens.

A workflow nobody but its builder understands isn't really institutional infrastructure, it's a personal favor the builder is doing the business indefinitely. The handoff document is what turns it into something the business actually owns.