In the current AI wave the first question is “where do we put an agent?”. The right question: “what actually needs context, and what is just a rule?”
Classic automation runs on a rule: if X, do Y. New form lead → recorded in the CRM → owner alerted within a minute. No judgment, no probabilities, same result every time. That is exactly what you want in sensitive steps: predictable, testable, cheap.
The agent enters when the rule is not enough: a customer question not in the FAQ, a comment that must be read as interest or complaint, a conversation that must decide whether to hand off to a human now. Here context has value, and risk.
So both work together under authority tiers:
- Tier 1: executes automatically on low-risk tasks.
- Tier 2: executes and sends a notification.
- Tier 3: proposes and waits for human approval.
Between them, fixed guardrails: permissions defining what the agent can and cannot do, approvals for sensitive decisions such as prices and promises, logs for every decision, rate limits against repetition, and a clear fallback when the agent does not know.
Bottom line: an agent adds value in the right place and doubles the cost in the wrong one. Start with the rule; add understanding where the rule stops.