A useful agent initiative starts with a bounded workflow. This brief gives the people responsible for delivery a shared record of what the agent should do, what it may access, and how success will be assessed.
1. Define the intended outcome
Record the objective, intended users, workflow owner, and explicit exclusions. Describe the trigger, inputs, outputs, and the points where a person makes a decision.
- Name an accountable workflow owner.
- Write the expected outcome in observable terms.
- List actions and outcomes that are outside the agent’s scope.
2. Specify the operating boundaries
Identify knowledge sources, sensitive information, and memory boundaries. List proposed tools and skills alongside the permissions they require.
- Document source ownership and retrieval scope.
- Describe what may persist and its retention period.
- Separate read access, proposed actions, and committed actions.
3. Establish evidence and economics
For each requirement, name an owner and a verification method. Estimate inference, tool, retrieval, retry, and review costs under a defined workload.
- Label cost inputs as assumptions until measured.
- Write measurable acceptance criteria.
- Record unresolved questions and the next review decision.
Bring the decisions together.
Connect this record to your specifications, controls, evaluations, and operational evidence. Revisit it when the workflow changes.
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