IntermediateLesson 3 of 58 min read
Monitoring and checking its work
A course from the Academy: AI agents: handing them a real task
Go to the quiz ↓An agent working on its own isn't necessarily an agent working well. It can land on the wrong page, misread a number, or claim it's done when it skipped a step. Your role changes: you no longer do the work, you check it.
During: keeping an eye on it
- Watch the first steps: most tools show what the agent is doing (pages opened, actions, files touched). If it starts off badly, stop it right away and rephrase.
- Ask for checkpoints: "Once you've found the suppliers, show me the list before going on."
- Require confirmation before any important action: sending, deleting, buying. Many tools offer this in their settings; turn it on.
After: checking, not just reading
- The report is not proof: "I checked all ten prices" doesn't mean it did. Open two or three links at random and compare.
- Spot-check: out of a hundred renamed files, look at about ten, including the first and the last.
- Look for what's missing: an agent rarely mentions what it didn't find. Ask it: "What did you leave out or fail to check?"
- Ask for its sources: for each piece of information, the link or file it came from.
When it goes off the rails
If the agent goes round in circles, repeats the same action or drifts from the mission, stop it. Restarting it unchanged is pointless: rephrase the mission with what went wrong, or split it into smaller pieces.
Analogy. A tradesperson redoing your bathroom. You don't lay the tiles yourself, but you drop by on the first day, you approve before they knock down a wall, and you turn on the taps before paying.
Key takeaways
- Watch the start, ask for checkpoints.
- Confirmation required before sending, deleting or buying.
- Spot-check and ask for sources.
- If it goes in circles: stop and rephrase, don't just restart.
Key concepts
Complete the lesson
A 4-question quiz: 3 correct answers are enough, plus an exercise to practise. It opens in the Academy, on this same lesson.
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