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PracticeApr 21, 20265 min read

Three decisions before you write your first agent spec

By Mira Chen · Forward-deployed engineer, NatorOS
Three decisions

Most teams want to start by writing the agent spec. Do not start there. Start with three decisions, made on paper, in a room with the operator and the approver.

1. What is the boundary of the agent's authority?

Not what it can do. What it can decide without asking. Be specific. If it can approve invoices up to $5,000 without a human, say so. If it can never change a vendor record, say so. The boundary is the contract, not the prompt.

2. What is the escalation path when the agent is unsure?

Not theoretically. Specifically. Which person, in which channel, with what SLA. A workflow that escalates to a generic queue is a workflow that never escalates. Pick a name and a Slack channel before you write a line of agent code.

3. What is the rollback?

If the agent does something you wish it had not, what undoes it? Some actions are trivially reversible (a draft email). Some are not (a paid invoice). For each tool the agent calls, write down the rollback. If there is no rollback, the agent does not get that tool until you have one.

We have never seen a successful agent that lacked clear answers to all three. We have seen many promising ones that died on the second one.

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