Reviewing a draft in under ninety seconds.

What to look at. What to skip. When to reject.

Ninety seconds is the target. Under thirty-five and you are rubber-stamping. Over two minutes and you are rewriting from scratch, which means the brief was wrong and the fix is upstream.

First check: the signal

Click the cited URL. Read the excerpt. If the signal is not in the source you are reading, reject with signal_unsupported. This is the only check you cannot skip. Everything else can be edited.

Second check: the date

Is the signal recent enough that the prospect remembers it? A pricing-page change from 14 months ago is not a signal worth opening with. Reject with signal_stale.

Third check: the ask

Six sentences with no ask is a newsletter, not an email. Edit the close or reject with no_ask.

Fourth check: the smell test

Read it aloud. If it sounds like a sequence cadence, reject. The model has tells. You learn them fast. Field Notes on rejected drafts publishes the patterns we see.

When to rewrite vs. reject

Reject when the brief is wrong. Edit when the brief is right and the wording is off. Rewriting from scratch means the brief is wrong and the fix is upstream; do not absorb that work at review.