Ownership Handoff Cliff

The Ownership Handoff Cliff is the gap between a workflow going live and someone being contractually responsible for it six months later. Agencies routinely build a client automation, declare victory at go-live, and then absorb unbudgeted breakage when an upstream API changes or a trigger silently stops firing. The framework asks one question before scoping: who owns this workflow on day 91? If the answer is the client, the deliverable includes runbooks, alert routing, and a named internal owner. If the answer is the agency, the build is priced as a retainer from the start, not a one-time project. Automation sprawl is the predictable result of skipping this step, since nobody knows which workflows are live or who answers when they fail. A practical test: list every active workflow across three client accounts and mark each one owned, orphaned, or unknown. The unknown column is your renegotiation list.