Annex IV technical documentation template (with examples)

This is a practical starting structure for an Annex IV technical file, with example language for each section. Treat it as a skeleton to fill in with your system's actual facts — not boilerplate to submit as-is.

1. System overview

Name: [system name]
Version: [version]
Intended purpose: [one paragraph — what the system does and who it's for]
Provider: [legal entity]
Deployment form: [SaaS / API / embedded / on-prem]

2. Design and development

Architecture summary: [one paragraph, plus a diagram if available]
Key algorithms/models used: [list, with versions]
Design assumptions: [what the system assumes about its inputs/environment]
Training data (if applicable): [source, scope, known limitations]

3. Monitoring and human oversight

Human oversight mechanism: [what a human can see and do]
Example: "A compliance reviewer approves or rejects each refund
recommendation above $500 before it is executed. In the 90 days
to [date], N recommendations were reviewed, of which N were
overridden."
Known limitations: [foreseeable misuse or failure modes]

4. Performance and validation

Accuracy metric(s): [metric, value, test set/period]
Robustness testing: [what was tested, results]
Example: "Tool-call success rate was 98.4% over the last 30 days,
measured from N execution traces; the 1.6% failure rate consisted
of N timeout errors, each of which triggered a human fallback."

5. Risk management

Identified risk: [description]
Mitigation: [what was done]
Residual risk: [what remains, and why it's judged acceptable]
Example: "Risk: agent could recommend refunds outside policy.
Mitigation: mandatory human approval above $500 (see Section 3).
Residual risk: recommendations under $500 execute automatically;
monitored via monthly sampling."

6. Change log

Date | Version | Change | Reason
[date] | v1.4 → v1.5 | [what changed] | [why]

Filling this in without starting from scratch

The hardest sections to fill in honestly are usually 3, 4, and 6 — they require evidence of what the system actually did, which most teams don't have assembled anywhere. That evidence exists in your agent's runtime traces. Attestly reads those traces directly and drafts this evidence-linked language for you, for human review rather than manual reconstruction.