---
schema: 1
type: term
title: '**SOPs**'
description: >-
  **SOPs** — standard operating procedures. As used in the channel's material:
  Michael Taylor's term for the working-method documents from his agency days —
  a Google Drive of hundreds of “here's how I do this” files
  [^01a0f15a-e590-7f2d-8b7d-8afcf1ca33f3@1455] — presented as the organizational
  ancestor of **rule books** and style guides, which the material treats as
  converging with AI prompts: a strong, opinionated style guide _is a prompt_,
  and the same document increasingly steers both people and models.
  [^01a0f15a-e590-7f2d-8b7d-8afcf1ca33f3@1638]
canonical: 'https://liquidgold.cc/channel/everyinc/explore/term/sops-8fb2d5e60ac0'
markdown: 'https://liquidgold.cc/channel/everyinc/explore/term/sops-8fb2d5e60ac0.md'
llms: null
parent: 'https://liquidgold.cc/channel/everyinc/llms.txt'
channel: everyinc
updated: '2026-10-23T22:12:35.346Z'
language: null
children: []
---


# \*\*SOPs\*\*

Canonical: https://liquidgold.cc/channel/everyinc/explore/term/sops-8fb2d5e60ac0

Parent: [Channel index](https://liquidgold.cc/channel/everyinc/llms.txt)

## Definition

**SOPs** — standard operating procedures. As used in the channel's material: Michael Taylor's term for the working-method documents from his agency days — a Google Drive of hundreds of “here's how I do this” files [^01a0f15a-e590-7f2d-8b7d-8afcf1ca33f3@1455] — presented as the organizational ancestor of **rule books** and style guides, which the material treats as converging with AI prompts: a strong, opinionated style guide _is a prompt_, and the same document increasingly steers both people and models. [^01a0f15a-e590-7f2d-8b7d-8afcf1ca33f3@1638]

In the captured material, **SOPs — standard operating procedures** — come from Michael Taylor's agency days: a **Google Drive of hundreds of “here's how I do this” documents**, each capturing one person's working method so others could repeat it. [^01a0f15a-e590-7f2d-8b7d-8afcf1ca33f3@1455] Taylor raises them as the organizational ancestor of the conversation's **rule books**: a junior writer extracts the difference between his draft and an expert rewrite into explicit criteria, and his next draft leaps dramatically in quality. [^01a0f15a-e590-7f2d-8b7d-8afcf1ca33f3@1455] The material's larger claim is that this habit of writing down how you do things has become prompt design. A strong, opinionated **style guide _is a prompt_** — and “prompts are kind of converging, where you'll be using the same prompt for people and for AI.” [^01a0f15a-e590-7f2d-8b7d-8afcf1ca33f3@1638] That convergence is also the material's rebuttal to “prompt engineering is dead”: objectives are large, high-dimensional, and differ per person, so being good at detailing _your_ objective — the same skill an SOP or rule book demands — **is** prompting. [^01a0f15a-e590-7f2d-8b7d-8afcf1ca33f3@1638]  Taylor's own SOP archive doubles as reusable prompt material: each “here's how I do this” document encodes judgment you can hand to a person — or feed to a model — and the rule-book pattern (compare a good and a bad version, ask what differs, extract each difference into a criterion) automates deriving those documents from expert work. [^01a0f15a-e590-7f2d-8b7d-8afcf1ca33f3@1455]    - **SOPs = standard operating procedures**: Taylor's agency kept hundreds of “here's how I do this” documents in a Google Drive. [^01a0f15a-e590-7f2d-8b7d-8afcf1ca33f3@1455] - They are the organizational version of the conversation's **rule books** — extracting expert differences into explicit, repeatable criteria. [^01a0f15a-e590-7f2d-8b7d-8afcf1ca33f3@1455] - A strong style guide **is a prompt**: prompts for people and AI are converging on the same document. [^01a0f15a-e590-7f2d-8b7d-8afcf1ca33f3@1638] - That's why “prompt engineering is dead” aged badly — detailing your objective, the skill an SOP demands, **is** prompting. [^01a0f15a-e590-7f2d-8b7d-8afcf1ca33f3@1638]