Watch the idea
The concept
Think
Plan the next step
Tool
Search, write, call
Check
Did it actually finish?
Human gate
Before it leaves the building
A clerk with a checklist
Give the agent a job, tools, and a stop rule. It plans, calls a tool, checks the result, and repeats. It is not magic staff. It is a loop you can draw on a whiteboard and put in the team SOP.
Anything that leaves the building needs a person
Mail, money, legal, customer promises. The model may draft. A named human approves. If you cannot name the approver, you do not have a gate — you have hope.
One painful weekly task
Start with the report, the meeting notes, or the customer draft you already dread. Measure minutes before. Add the loop and a gate. Measure after. That story makes you the AI person on the team without a new title.
Worked example
Weekly status, not the company
Meera's team pastes last week's tickets into a prompt, gets a draft status, and a manager spends eight minutes editing before Slack. They do not let it rewrite strategy. Narrow, gated, measurable.
Picture to keep
Think → Act → Check
- 1Job + tools
- 2Human gate
- 3Stop rule