AI-NATIVE AGENT LAUNCH CHECKLIST (2026)

Use this checklist to ship one agentic workflow into production with predictable cost, reliability, and trust.

1) SCOPE (PRODUCT)
- Define ONE workflow with a clear ROI metric (examples: refunds under $50, invoice coding, tier-1 support triage, password reset).
- Write the task contract: required inputs, expected outputs, “definition of done,” and explicit non-goals.
- Identify risk tier: Low (drafts/reads only), Medium (reversible writes), High (money movement, compliance, security).

2) TOOLS (ENGINEERING)
- Expose tools with typed schemas; validate inputs before execution.
- Enforce least privilege at the tool layer (not just in prompts).
- Add hard constraints (amount caps, allowed fields, allowed recipients, allowed systems).
- Make tools idempotent with idempotency keys and transaction logs.

3) BUDGETS (FINOPS)
- Set per-task budgets: max model tokens, max tool calls, max retrieval chunks, max wall-clock time.
- Implement budget-aware routing (cheap model for triage; stronger model for synthesis; best model for final/high-stakes).
- Define a “cost per successful task” target and acceptable variance (e.g., ±15% p50, ±30% p95).

4) OBSERVABILITY (OPS)
- Capture structured traces: model calls, tool calls, retrieved sources, intermediate decisions, final actions.
- Log correlation IDs across the agent runtime and downstream systems.
- Build dashboards: task success rate, tool error rate, escalation rate, p50/p95 latency, $/task.

5) EVALUATION (QA)
- Create a golden set (200–2,000 tasks) from real historical data; scrub PII.
- Define a failure taxonomy (wrong tool, wrong args, incomplete action, policy violation, hallucination, bad handoff).
- Run offline evals on every change (prompt, model, retrieval index, tool schema).
- Add online monitoring with canary releases and regression alarms.

6) SAFETY & TRUST (GOVERNANCE)
- Gate irreversible actions behind explicit user confirmation or human approval tokens.
- Require provenance for factual claims (citations to retrieved docs/tickets/policies).
- Provide reversibility: drafts, staged commits, undo where possible.
- Add a kill switch + safe mode that degrades to read-only assistance.

7) LAUNCH (ROLL-OUT)
- Start with 1–5% traffic; increase only after 2–4 weeks of stable metrics.
- Document runbooks: escalation procedures, incident response, rollback steps.
- Train support/ops teams on how to review agent outputs and report failure cases.

8) SCALE (IMPROVEMENT LOOP)
- Review top 20 failure cases weekly; fix via tool constraints, better retrieval, or UX clarification.
- Add new autonomy only after thresholds hold (e.g., ≥85% success low-risk; ≥95% high-risk).
- Track ROI continuously: hours saved, cycle time reduced, containment rate, and customer satisfaction impact.