What makes an AI agent production-ready

A prototype that impresses in a demo is not the same as an agent you can trust with real work. Before an agent goes live, we look at five things.

1. A narrow, well-defined job

Agents perform best when the task, inputs and outputs are specific. Start with one process and define what ‘done’ and ‘wrong’ look like.

2. Guardrails and approvals

Decide which actions the agent may take alone and which need a person. Set thresholds, allow-lists and escalation rules before launch, not after the first incident.

3. Evaluation

Build a test set from real examples and measure the agent against it every time a prompt, model or tool changes. Without this you are guessing.

4. Observability and audit trail

Log what the agent saw, decided and did, so every action can be explained and reviewed.

5. Clean integration

Use least-privilege credentials and stable interfaces to the systems the agent touches.

If you can answer all five clearly, you are ready for a controlled pilot.