The fastest way to break a production AI agent? tell it exactly what to do.
Two opposite ways to get authoring wrong.
Score only the final answer → the agent passes and you have no idea why. The false pass ships, and the bill lands three weeks later.
Script every step → you encode every case the expert imagined, and it breaks on the first one nobody saw. Edge cases are unforeseeable by definition.
Production AI works differently. You don't write the script. You set the destination and the fence, then split the work:
— the expert defines the outcome and the boundaries: what's allowed, when a human takes over
— the engineer builds the integrations and infrastructure
— the system finds its own path inside the boundaries, measured step by step
Procedure-driven automation cracks the first time reality doesn't match the script.
An agent built on goals and boundaries keeps working and tells you exactly where it bent.