Documentation That Actually Matters

Three generations of AI documentation now coexist:

• Model cards (Google's convention) — intended use, performance across groups, limitations: the de facto minimum disclosure for any released model
• System cards (OpenAI's extension) — the deployed system's safety posture: evals, mitigations, residual risks, not just the base model
• AI Act Annex IV technical documentation — the statutory version for high-risk systems: intended purpose, design specs, architecture, data requirements and provenance, risk management, validation methodology, performance metrics, human-oversight measures

Annex IV is the important one: it's a legal checklist, not a voluntary genre — and it must exist before the system is placed on the market.