AI Agents
Intermediate
17 min
What an agent actually is — goal, tools, memory, loop
The problem
Three vendors offer you 'AI agents'. One is a chatbot with a knowledge base. One is a scheduled automation with a natural-language trigger.
The workflow
1Define the goal
2List the tools
3Write the constraints
4Decide memory
5Set stopping conditions
6Test bounded
7Supervise
★Widen slowly
What you need
Task: research and qualify inbound leads before a salesperson sees them. Why I think it needs an agent: each lead needs different research depending on what we find.
The tool
Agent modes in the major assistants
The prompt
Subscribers. The full prompt is part of the SMEMinds AI Playbook. See plans.
What comes back
1. CAN THE PATH BE ENUMERATED?
Verify before you use it
Human review required. Check every line below before this leaves your screen.
- The conclusion is that you need an automation. That is the correct and common answer, and accepting it saves considerable cost.
- Note the consistency argument — for scoring and qualification, variable research depth between leads is a defect, not a feature.
- If you build the automation, the one conditional needs a clear threshold. Define it explicitly.
- Keep the blast-radius analysis. You will want it when a vendor next offers you an agent for this.