Define a goal with a stopping condition
Describe what completion means and what is outside the task. Specify when the agent should stop because it has succeeded, cannot proceed or needs a person to decide.
A broad instruction such as “manage operations” leaves too much unspecified. A narrow task with explicit inputs and permitted actions is easier to test and supervise.
Inventory tools and action consequences
For each proposed tool, record what the agent can read, create, change or delete. Identify the business records and people affected by those actions.
Separate observation from changes with external effects. Assign approval requirements to the actions that need them, and ensure the system can enforce the boundary rather than relying only on a written instruction.
Treat external content as information to assess
Documents, messages and tool results can contain misleading or malicious instructions. The design needs to preserve the distinction between the task owner’s instructions and material the agent encounters while working.
OpenAI’s agent safety guidance discusses prompt injection, data leakage, tool approvals and evaluations. These are relevant risk categories to review; the reference does not imply that Webseek has a specific provider implementation or that any control eliminates all failures. Read the agent safety guidance.
Test the path as well as the final output
Build evaluation cases for ordinary inputs, ambiguity, unavailable tools, invalid responses and attempts to push the agent outside its scope. Inspect which tools were called and whether approval requirements were respected.
Record unacceptable actions separately from task success. An agent that reaches the requested result through an unauthorized change has failed an important part of the evaluation.
Bound execution and operating cost
Define limits on steps, runtime, retries and spending where relevant. Clarify how repeated failure is detected and what happens when a limit is reached.
Choose a rollout scope small enough for the responsible team to inspect behavior and respond to issues. Changes to tools, models or instructions should trigger an appropriate review of the evaluation cases.
Prepare human review and recovery
A reviewer needs enough context to make a decision: the proposed action, affected records and relevant evidence. Define who may approve, reject or stop the work.
Plan for partial completion. If a business record has already changed, a simple retry or return to an earlier state may be inappropriate. Identify how the team will inspect and reconcile what happened.
Assign the operating owner
Name the person or role accountable for the process, permissions, evaluation and response to failures. Activity records should support investigation while respecting the agreed data boundary.
Readiness is a documented operating decision, not a label earned by a successful demonstration.
Webseek’s Agentic AI Systems service helps define the goal and implementation boundaries. Explore our technology categories, AI opportunity guide and automation-versus-orchestration guide for the surrounding design decisions.