The AI-Augmented Analyst
A workflow for using Claude and agents on real deal tasks — comps, precedent transactions, and memo drafting — without losing rigor.
22 min readPrereqs: three-statement-model
AI doesn't replace the analyst — it compresses the grunt work so you can spend more time on judgment. Here is the AlphaForge workflow.
Three tasks worth automating
- Comps gathering — pull and normalize trading multiples across a peer set.
- Precedent transactions — summarize deal terms from filings into a structured table.
- Memo drafting — turn a structured fact base into a first-draft investment memo.
The rule: generate, then verify
Every AI output is a draft, not a fact. The discipline:
- Ask for the answer and its source.
- Recompute one number by hand for every ten the model produces.
- Never paste a multiple into a model you can't trace back to a filing.
Prompt shape that works
A good IB prompt names the task, the inputs, the output schema, and the guardrails ("cite the line item; flag anything you estimated"). Structure beats cleverness.