How to write an SOP in 5 minutes (with AI)

Here’s the uncomfortable truth about standard operating procedures: everyone agrees they matter, and almost nobody writes them. Not because teams are lazy — because the traditional process is brutal. Do the task. Screenshot every step. Crop the screenshots. Write the instructions. Format the document. Realize you missed a step. Start over.

That afternoon-long grind is why critical knowledge stays locked in people’s heads. The fix isn’t discipline. It’s removing the writing entirely.

Step 1: Record the task once (2 minutes)

Open Routinly and hit record — or upload an existing video, or paste a YouTube URL. Then just do the task the way you always do. Don’t narrate perfectly, don’t slow down for imaginary screenshots. The recording is the raw material; the AI does the rest.

Step 2: Let the AI draft it (about 1 minute)

Routinly analyzes the recording, detects each discrete action — clicks, form fields, screen changes — and writes a numbered instruction for every one. It also pulls the right frame from the video as the screenshot for each step, so the visual always matches the text.

If your team has a house style, set a custom tone once and every SOP comes out sounding like you wrote it: formal for compliance docs, friendly for onboarding, terse for engineers.

Step 3: Review, then ship (2 minutes)

Skim the draft, fix anything the AI got wrong, and delete steps you don’t need. Then publish a share link, or export to PDF, Markdown, or HTML — whichever format your team’s wiki, LMS, or client expects.

What changes when SOPs take 5 minutes

Teams that drop the cost of documentation this far stop rationing it. Instead of documenting only the “important” processes, they document everything: the quarterly report export, the client handoff checklist, the weird invoicing workaround only Dana knows. When Dana goes on holiday, nothing breaks.

That’s the real payoff — not prettier documents, but knowledge that survives contact with reality.