/ Original tool · WallJobs · ianorh
One sheet. Nine blocks. Three zones. The tool that was missing for HR teams to design an AI agent before opening ChatGPT.
/ 3Z Method
Person, Intelligence, Governance. Three zones that organize the agent's design in the right order.
/ Why this canvas exists
The category of canvases to design AI agents already exists. There's a version from the product crowd, one from tech consultancies, one translated straight from Silicon Valley. They all ask similar questions: who uses it, what it does, the metric. They all stop at the surface when the subject is HR.
This canvas is different on three points I see as non-negotiable. First, it dedicates a block to sensitive data, because almost everything HR touches passes through data protection law, and pretending otherwise gets expensive later. Second, the risk block explicitly mentions bias by gender, race and age, collective agreements, regulatory norms. The words of your daily work, not those of a pitch.
And third, the canvas asks for two metrics at the end, not one. The business metric, which finance understands. The human one, which the employee feels. Without both, it's easy to gain efficiency and lose people. And in HR, losing people is losing the job.
The point of this canvas was never to land on a catchy acronym. It was to stop seeing AI-in-HR projects reach month four without anyone writing down the real pain, the sensitive data and the person holding the final call.
/ See the sheet
One A4 landscape page. Dark green header, nine blocks color-coded by zone, ruled lines in each space for handwriting. No assistant, no app, no internet needed to run the exercise.
AI-HR Canvas · A4 landscape · 1 page
/ The three zones method
Order matters. When a team starts with Intelligence, technology goes looking for a problem. When it starts with Governance, it freezes before testing. The canvas forces you to start with Person and only descend afterwards. The three cards below are the spine.
/ Zone 01
Always start with the person on the other side, not with the technology. Who uses it, what hurts, what they gain. Without this zone settled, the agent becomes a solution looking for a problem.
/ Zone 02
Only now does the technology enter. What the agent needs to know to be useful, which personal data it accesses, and what exactly it does. This is where most canvases begin, and that's why they miss.
/ Zone 03
The zone usually left for later, and in HR that's not an option. Where the human always decides, where bias and compliance risk live, and how we'll measure outcomes without replacing people with charts.
/ The nine blocks, one by one
01
/ Person
Before the technology, the name of the person on the other side. It might be an employee who wants to understand a benefit, a manager who needs a report, a candidate waiting for feedback, a BP team drowning in engagement survey data. The more specific, the better.
02
/ Person
What that person can't solve today, and how much it costs in time, energy or dignity each week. The canvas asks you to write in hours or in sentences, not in vague estimates. Without that measure, it's hard to know whether AI actually helped.
03
/ Person
One sentence, starting with a verb: the agent does this so that the person can do that. If you need two paragraphs to explain the promise, it isn't clear enough yet to start building.
04
/ Intelligence
What the agent needs to read to answer with the house's voice. Internal manuals, benefits policy, collective bargaining agreement, regulatory norms, executive memos. Good AI is the one with access to the right content, not the one that improvises without a base.
05
/ Intelligence
Which personal data the agent will access and what that means under data protection law (GDPR, LGPD, the local equivalent). Tax IDs, salary, performance reviews, medical records. This block exists because most AI canvas templates skip this question, and in HR it's the first one that matters.
06
/ Intelligence
The verb, what the agent actually does. Answers a question, classifies a ticket, drafts a memo, opens a request in the system, schedules a meeting. List action verbs to avoid vague promises.
07
/ Governance
The line the agent does not cross without a human stepping in first. It could be a termination decision, a reply to an internal complaint, advice that carries labor risk. This is where HR protects HR.
08
/ Governance
Where the agent can discriminate or fail systematically. Bias by gender, race, age, region. Clauses under data protection law, collective agreements, regulatory norms, ESG. The canvas doesn't give you the answer, but it forces you to look.
09
/ Governance
Two metrics. One business metric, the one your CFO understands: time saved, volume handled, cost per case. One human metric, the one your employee feels: trust, effort, satisfaction. Without both, it's easy to win on efficiency and lose on people.
/ How to use it in a workshop
The sheet was designed to run in a one-hour block. Split the room into teams of three to five people. Print one sheet per team, or tape the A3 to the wall if the group is large. Each team picks one agent they'd like to try inside the company and starts filling it out.
The single rule is to start with the Person zone and only go down from there. No agent name, no real pain, no promise: no ChatGPT. When someone skips that order, ask them to go back. It isn't fussiness, it's what keeps you from spending the year arguing about the architecture of something nobody asked for.
At the end, each team presents the filled canvas in three minutes. The other teams ask where it hurts. Whatever survives the round becomes a POC. What doesn't survive returns to the next cycle with the canvas redone.
/ Download and print
Use it freely in internal workshops, HR trainings or team immersions. We only ask that you keep the credit line in the footer and tag @walljobs on LinkedIn if you share a photo.
/ Version 01 · Recommended
Full version with hints and ruled lines. Print one sheet per team to fill in by hand during the workshop.
PDF · A4 landscape · 1 page
/ Version 02
Large version, made to tape to the wall and fill in as a group with post-its. More expressive header, more room to write.
PDF · A3 landscape · 1 page
/ Version 03
Version without italic hints, just the labels. Useful for teams who already know the method and want to run the sprint fast.
PDF · A4 portrait · 1 page
/ Who designed it
CEO at WallJobs, author of "AI for HR in Practice" (Portuguese), editor of the iapararh.substack.com newsletter. This canvas came out of three years of lab work applying AI to recruiting, payroll, business partnering and people analytics, and dozens of workshops with Brazilian HR teams that ran into the same gaps.
If you want to see the canvas working live in a workshop with your team, the "HR's role with AI" talk can be brought to your company. The sheet is always included.
/ Next step
Every Tuesday and Friday, a short note on applying AI in HR (in Portuguese). No silver bullet, no canned pitch.
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