Operational playbook for EU AI Act compliance readiness — focused on the sprint to demonstrate readiness for the Aug 2026 high-risk AI deadline and ongoing conformity assessments.
When to use this skill vs. eu-ai-act-specialist:
- This skill: assessment imminent; need readiness sprint
- eu-ai-act-specialist: building AI Act compliance program; classifying systems; designing conformity processes
When to use this skill
| Situation | Skill applies |
|---|---|
| Aug 2026 high-risk deadline approaching | Yes — readiness sprint |
| Notified body conformity assessment scheduled | Yes — full prep |
| GPAI model obligations apply (Aug 2025+) | Yes — GPAI-specific checklist |
| Annual readiness review | Yes — periodic sprint |
| Building AI Act program from scratch | Use ra-qm-team/eu-ai-act-specialist |
| AI system classification | Use ra-qm-team/eu-ai-act-specialist |
Key AI Act timelines
| Date | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Aug 2, 2024 | AI Act enters into force |
| Feb 2, 2025 | Prohibited practices effective; AI literacy requirements |
| Aug 2, 2025 | GPAI provider obligations effective |
| Aug 2, 2026 | Most high-risk AI requirements effective |
| Aug 2, 2027 | All high-risk AI requirements + product safety harmonization |
The readiness sprint
8-week sprint (high-risk system, conformity assessment prep)
Week 1-2: System classification confirmation; gap analysis
Week 3-5: Documentation buildout (technical file, risk management, data governance)
Week 6-7: Conformity assessment internal dry-run
Week 8: External notified-body engagement / assessment
4-week sprint (GPAI obligations)
Week 1: System classification (provider/deployer/importer/etc.)
Week 2: Documentation prep (model card, training data summary, copyright compliance)
Week 3: Risk assessment + transparency obligations
Week 4: Submission / publication of required information
Critical AI Act areas
Risk classification
Per Article 6 / Annex III, AI systems classify into risk categories:
| Category | Examples | Requirements |
|---|---|---|
| Prohibited | Social scoring; behavior manipulation of vulnerable groups | Cannot deploy |
| High-risk | Biometric ID; critical infrastructure; education; employment; access to essential services; law enforcement | Comprehensive obligations |
| Limited-risk (transparency) | Chatbots; deepfakes; emotion recognition | Disclosure obligation |
| Minimal-risk | Most enterprise AI; spam filters | Voluntary code of conduct |
| GPAI | Large language models; foundation models | Separate obligations (Article 51+) |
High-risk system requirements (Articles 9-15, plus 16-22)
| Requirement | Article |
|---|---|
| Risk management system | Art. 9 |
| Data governance + quality | Art. 10 |
| Technical documentation | Art. 11 |
| Record-keeping (logging) | Art. 12 |
| Transparency to users | Art. 13 |
| Human oversight | Art. 14 |
| Accuracy, robustness, cybersecurity | Art. 15 |
| Quality management system | Art. 17 |
| Conformity assessment | Art. 43 |
| Registration in EU database | Art. 71 |
| Post-market monitoring | Art. 72 |
| Serious incident reporting | Art. 73 |
GPAI provider obligations (Article 53+)
| Requirement | Detail |
|---|---|
| Technical documentation | Per Annex XI |
| Training data summary (public) | Sufficiently detailed |
| Copyright compliance | Honor opt-outs from text/data mining |
| Information to downstream providers | Enable downstream compliance |
| Code of practice compliance | (Optional but presumed conformity) |
GPAI with systemic risk (Article 55, models > 10^25 FLOPs training compute)
Additional requirements:
- Model evaluations
- Adversarial testing
- Systemic risk assessment + mitigation
- Serious incident reporting
- Cybersecurity protection
Clarify First
Before running the readiness assessment, confirm these inputs. If any is unknown or vague, ASK — do not assume:
- AI system risk class — high-risk (Annex III), GPAI, or limited-risk (determines whether to run the 8-week high-risk sprint or the 4-week GPAI sprint, and which checklist applies)
- Trigger event — Aug 2026 high-risk deadline, scheduled notified-body conformity assessment, GPAI obligations, or annual review (sets sprint length and scope)
- Your role — provider, deployer, or importer (determines which obligation set is assessed)
Stop rule: ask only the 2-3 that most change the output. If the user says "just draft it," proceed and list your assumptions at the top of the assessment.
Quick start
- Run readiness score:
python3 scripts/ai_act_readiness_score.py --config ai-system.yaml - Check GPAI obligations (if applicable):
python3 scripts/gpai_obligation_checker.py --model model.yaml - Pick sprint length based on score + system risk class
- Execute sprint per references/ai-act-readiness-checklist.md
Common AI Act readiness failures
- Misclassification: deploying system as "limited-risk" when it's actually "high-risk" (Annex III)
- Risk management as one-time: AI Act requires continuous risk management
- Data governance gaps: training data without representativeness analysis
- Logging missing: post-market monitoring requires logs you don't have
- Human oversight theater: oversight that can't actually intervene
- GPAI training data summary missing: required since Aug 2025
- No conformity assessment plan: assuming notified body assessment is automatic
- AI literacy training skipped: required for staff working with AI systems
Tooling
| Script | Purpose |
|---|---|
scripts/ai_act_readiness_score.py |
Score current AI Act readiness per system |
scripts/gpai_obligation_checker.py |
Validate GPAI provider obligations (Article 53+) |
References
- ai-act-readiness-checklist.md — full punch list per requirement
- high-risk-system-readiness-playbook.md — high-risk-specific deep prep
Related skills
ra-qm-team/eu-ai-act-specialist— deep AI Act program managementra-qm-team/iso42001-ai-management— ISO 42001 AIMS (companion AI governance)ra-qm-team/audit-prep/aims-audit— AIMS audit-prep variantra-qm-team/audit-prep/gdpr-audit-prep— GDPR overlay for AI processing personal datara-qm-team/audit-prep/compliance-readiness— multi-framework readiness