I use checklists for that. The second time I do something o make a checklist, at a certain point I decide I need to automate it and I have all the steps mapped

I use checklists for that. The second time I do something o make a checklist, at a certain point I decide I need to automate it and I have all the steps mapped out to start from. It works well on practice because a checklist is quite mutable, if something goes awry it gets added as a step the next time until I've covered the edge cases. To make them I use vscode, markdown/journal plugin and mdpdf to print them to pdf, so they can be source controlled easily as well.