Editing SOP steps

What it is

Every documented SOP in Verinode is really one thing under the hood: an ordered list of steps, each with a type, a description, a role, an estimated time, and the equipment it needs. The step editor is the inline tool on the SOP detail card that lets you add, edit, and remove those steps directly, without re-uploading a document or starting a new chat with IQ. It sits inside the Process Steps section near the bottom of the card, below the LEAN Score, Framework Scores, and Waste Signals sections covered in The SOP detail card.

Verinode does not write your steps for you here. It reads whatever you type, saves it, and re-runs LEAN analysis against the new list so the score stays honest. You are the one deciding what the step says, who does it, and how long it should take.

This editor only appears on My SOPs cards, the kind backed by your own documented procedures. Pending Confirmations cards (agent-inferred patterns waiting on your confirm or dismiss) and Standards cards (IICRC, LEAN, OSHA, EPA, and state reference procedures) each have their own layout, not this editor. If you want to start editing a Standard's steps, first adopt it as a draft SOP from its card, that copies its steps into a new SOP of your own, which does get this editor.

Where to find it

Open Processes from the sidebar, at /processes. Click into any SOP tile under My SOPs to open its detail card, then look at the Details tab. Scroll past the LEAN Score, Process Rating, and linking sections to the section titled Process Steps (N), where N is however many steps the SOP currently has.

View mode

By default the section is read-only. Each step renders as a row:

• A two-digit step number (01, 02, 03…) in the top left.
• A pill showing the step's type (Inspection, Extraction, Setup, Containment, Demo, Drying, Monitoring, Sanitization, Documentation, or Completion, title-cased from whatever was typed in).
• If the step is locked in by a source standard's citation, a copper Required · [citation] pill next to the type pill. Hover it to see the rationale for why the standard calls for this step.
• The step's estimated minutes, right-aligned, only shown when a value is set.
• The step's description.
• Below that, the assigned role (title-cased for display, e.g. "lead tech" shows as "Lead Tech") and the equipment list, comma-separated, when either is filled in.

Nothing on this screen is editable yet. Click Edit steps, top right of the section, to switch into edit mode.

Edit mode

Clicking Edit steps re-seeds a working draft from the SOP's current saved steps and flips every row into a form. The caption above the rows changes to remind you the draft is not saved yet: "Editing, changes don't persist until you save." (For SOPs adopted from a standard, the caption instead reads "Refine the adopted template to match how your team actually runs this work." For hand-built or uploaded SOPs it reads "Edit steps directly. LEAN re-scores after you save.")

Each row in edit mode exposes five fields:

• Type, a text field with a dropdown of suggestions (Inspection, Extraction, Setup, Containment, Demo, Drying, Monitoring, Sanitization, Documentation, Completion), but you can type any value you want, it is not restricted to the list.
• Estimated minutes, a number field. Leave it blank to store no time estimate.
• Description, a multi-line text box for what happens in this step.
• Role, a free-text field for who performs it (e.g. Lead Technician, Crew Member, Project Manager, Estimator, Subcontractor, Office, or anything else you use internally).
• Equipment, a single comma-separated text field (e.g. "moisture meter, air mover, HEPA vacuum"). Verinode splits it on commas, trims whitespace, and drops empty entries when it saves.

Two buttons sit at the top of the section while editing: Cancel, which discards every change and reverts the draft back to the SOP's last saved steps, and Save steps, which persists the draft and re-runs LEAN analysis. Both are disabled while a save is in progress, and Save steps shows a loading state until the write completes.

1. 1Click Edit steps to open the form.
2. 2Adjust type, minutes, description, role, or equipment on any row. Changes are local until you save; the section title's step count updates live as you add or remove rows.
3. 3Click + Add step to append a new blank step at the bottom of the list (type defaults to Inspection, everything else starts empty).
4. 4Click Remove on any row to drop it from the draft. If the row is marked Required, you will get a confirmation prompt first (see below).
5. 5Click Save steps to persist the draft, or Cancel to throw it away and go back to view mode unchanged.

Adding a step

+ Add step, at the bottom of the editing list, appends one blank row: type "Inspection," empty description, empty role, no estimated minutes, no equipment. It always lands at the end of the list, there is no way to insert a step in the middle or drag-reorder, so if a new step belongs earlier in the sequence, add it and then edit the surrounding rows so the order still reads correctly, or remove and re-add rows to get the sequence you want.

Removing a step: the Required pill and the warn-before-delete guardrail

Some SOPs are not built from scratch, they are adopted from an IICRC, LEAN, OSHA, EPA, or state reference standard using Adopt as draft SOP on a Standards card. When a standard locks specific steps in by citation (for example, a specific IICRC S500 section requiring psychrometric documentation), those steps carry the copper Required · [citation] pill on the SOP you adopted, in both view mode and edit mode. Hovering the pill shows the rationale on file for why that citation requires the step.

Clicking Remove on a row that carries this pill does not delete it immediately. Verinode shows a confirmation first:

Remove a required step? "[Citation] requires this step at position [N]: '[rationale]'. Removing it means your SOP no longer aligns with the source standard."

Confirming reads Remove anyway, framed as a destructive action, and only then does the row leave your draft. Dismissing the prompt leaves the step exactly where it was. This is a warn-and-allow guardrail, not a hard block: Verinode will let you remove a required step if that is genuinely what your team needs, it just makes sure you see the tradeoff first rather than losing a citation-backed step by accident. Removing a row that is not marked Required deletes it with no prompt at all.

Two things worth knowing about how the Required pill is assigned:

• It only appears on SOPs adopted from a standard that actually locks steps by citation. A hand-built, uploaded, chat-generated, or estimate-derived SOP never shows this pill, since there is no source standard to check positions against.
• The match is positional: Verinode checks whether the step currently sitting at a given row number matches a required position from the source standard, not a permanent tag stuck to that specific step.

Saving: the async LEAN re-score

Clicking Save steps does two things. First, it writes your draft as the SOP's new step list right away, that part is synchronous, and you get a success toast: "Steps saved. LEAN re-scoring runs in the background." The card then refreshes and drops back into view mode showing your new steps.

Second, saving kicks off a fresh LEAN analysis in the background, the same analysis that produces the LEAN Score, Framework Scores, Waste Signals, and Top Recommendations sections higher up on the same Details tab. This step does not block the save, and it is not instant: Verinode sends the updated step list to its LEAN analysis model, which scores the SOP from 0 to 100 against LEAN's eight-waste framework (waiting, transportation, motion, defects, over-processing, overproduction, inventory, and underused skills), plus any IICRC, OSHA, or other frameworks attached to the SOP, and returns an updated score, a per-framework breakdown, a short list of the most impactful waste flags, and its top three recommendations. Because this runs as a background job rather than inline with the save, the LEAN Score section may still show the previous number for a short stretch after you save. Give it a moment and refresh the page, or navigate away and back into the card, to see the new score land.

If you remove every step and save an SOP with zero steps, the analysis short-circuits rather than scoring an empty procedure: the LEAN score resets to 0, the delta reads well below standard, and the single recommendation on file becomes "Add steps to this SOP to receive a LEAN analysis." There are no waste flags to show against an empty list.

Each re-score also feeds an anonymized contribution into Verinode's intelligence layer (your category, the updated LEAN score, the framework scores, step count, and total estimated minutes), the same one-way contribution every SOP save makes. As of today this does not read anything back into your Processes card, peer comparison for processes is still being built, so saving steps will not change what you see on any peer or benchmark surface yet.

If a save fails (for example, a network error or a permissions issue), you get an inline error toast instead of the success message, and your draft steps remain in the editor exactly as you left them so you don't lose the edit, you can try Save steps again.

Empty states

If an SOP has no steps recorded at all (rare, but possible for a brand-new draft), the Process Steps section shows: "No steps recorded. Click Edit steps to add some." There is nothing to view until you add at least one step.

Related reading

• The SOP detail card
• Processes overview
• The "All Processes" tab
• The decision workspace
• Understanding your margin