AI Agent Production Checklist
Devisgon engineering guidance · Published October 2, 2026
A successful demo answers a few questions. A business agent also needs to handle missing data, expired credentials, ambiguous requests and actions that need a person’s approval. Use this worksheet to decide what your first release must do and what should remain manual.
1. Define one valuable task
Write a task with a trigger, approved inputs and a clear output. For example: classify a new inbound enquiry, propose the correct team and prepare a CRM update for review. Record what the agent must never do. Avoid giving an initial agent unrestricted access to every business system.
- Task owner and expected output are named.
- Representative successful and unsuccessful inputs are available.
- A human can complete the task when the agent is unavailable.
2. Give tools narrow permissions
Separate reading a record from changing it. A support assistant may retrieve a customer’s order without being allowed to issue a refund. Validate the requested action and record identifier on the server, rather than treating the model’s tool arguments as trusted instructions.
- Tools enforce the signed-in user’s permissions.
- Sensitive actions have a review or approval step.
- Credentials and private data are excluded from model-visible output.
3. Test behavior, not just fluent answers
Create a small acceptance set before changing prompts. Include an authorized task, an unauthorized task, an incomplete request, conflicting source documents and an unavailable API. For each case, record the expected decision, allowed tools and escalation outcome. Re-run the same cases after a model, prompt or integration change.
- Unauthorized record access is rejected.
- Uncertain answers are escalated rather than invented.
- A failed write is visible to the operator.
4. Plan recovery and duplicate protection
An API can accept a write even when the response is lost. Use operation identifiers or the provider’s idempotency support when retrying actions. Distinguish a retryable failure from an invalid request. Keep enough audit information to explain the action while avoiding unnecessary sensitive data in logs.
- Retries do not create duplicate CRM tasks or messages.
- Operators can inspect failed steps and resume safely.
- Monitoring has an owner and an agreed response process.
5. Decide whether to release
Review task completion, incorrect actions, staff review load, latency and operating cost on representative work. Agree acceptable thresholds with the workflow owner. This checklist does not certify safety or guarantee a business outcome; the right controls depend on the data and actions involved.
- Release and rollback criteria are written.
- Staff understand the handoff and override process.
- Post-launch evaluation and support responsibilities are agreed.
Discuss the next step
Bring your current tools, representative inputs and priority user journey. We can review fit and the scope of a first release.