AI Agents Are Not Chatbots
AI
An agent that can act on your systems is a different product from one that can talk about them. The difference shows up in the permissions, not the prompt.
The distinction
A chatbot answers. An agent decides, calls a tool, and changes something. The moment software can write to a system rather than read from it, you are no longer shipping a conversation, you are shipping an actor with credentials.
Start with the smallest scope
Give an agent one job and one system. "Draft the reply" is a scope you can evaluate; "handle support" is not. Narrow scope is also what makes the failure modes describable, and a failure you cannot describe is one you cannot test.
Every action needs a receipt
Log the input, the tool called, the arguments, and the result. When an agent does something unexpected, and it will, the log is the difference between a fix and a rewrite. Treat it as a product requirement, not an engineering nicety.
Keep a human on the expensive paths
Refunds, deletions, anything that touches money or identity: propose, do not perform. The agent drafts the action and a person approves it. Confidence scores are not a substitute for accountability.
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