™You now know the parts of an agent: the model, the instructions, the tools and the information. What makes it an agent is how those parts work together, over and over.
The loop
An agent works in a cycle:
- Plan. Read the goal and decide the next step.
- Act. Use a tool or write something.
- Check. Look at the result. Did it work? Is anything missing?
- Adjust. Decide the next step, or decide the job is done.
It repeats until the goal is met, it gets stuck, or it reaches a point where it should hand over to a person. This loop is what lets an agent handle jobs where the steps aren't the same every time.
It's also why agents need guardrails. Every lap of the loop is a chance to do something useful, or something you didn't intend.
Five guardrails worth insisting on
- Approval before anything important. The agent drafts, a person approves. Especially for customer messages, money and anything hard to undo.
- Narrow permissions. Only the tools and data the job needs. An agent that answers product questions doesn't need access to payroll.
- Limits. A cap on how many emails it can send, how much it can spend, or how many steps it can take before stopping.
- A log. A record of what the agent did and why, so you can review it and spot problems early.
- A clear handover. Defined situations where it stops and passes the job to a person: complaints, emergencies, unusual requests, anything it's unsure about.
Test before you trust
Before an agent works on its own, run it on real examples while a person watches. Include the awkward cases: the angry customer, the unclear request, the question it shouldn't answer. Loosen the guardrails only as it earns trust, the same way you would with a new employee.