Agents

Agent scope

Agents should start with a narrow job and a clear audience. Define what the agent can answer, which tools it can use, what it must refuse, and who reviews traces. Do not give an agent broad write access before evals and traces show reliable behavior.

Tools and memory

Agent quality depends on selected Knowledge Base sources, tool permissions, triggers, memory policy, and review surfaces. The Agents feature explains the builder, and roles and permissions should be reviewed before granting broader capability.

Evaluation

Use low-risk tests before publishing an agent to a customer-facing panel. The agent tutorial shows how to keep checkout knowledge answers bounded and reviewable.

Owner and cadence

• Primary owner: operations lead for the affected workflow, watcher, agent, playbook, or custom tool.
• Review cadence: before first run, after failed runs, after provider changes, and during monthly automation review.
• Escalate when automation writes production data, repeats failures, sends customer-facing output, or runs without a visible owner.

Production checklist

• Give each agent a narrow purpose, approved sources, explicit tool permissions, refusal rules, trace review, and staged rollout.
• Run eval cases before exposing an agent to customer-facing panels or write-capable tools.
• Define trigger, owner, input data, output, approval requirement, retry behavior, failure notification, and kill switch before enabling automation.
• Start with read-only runs or staging examples until the team has reviewed successful traces and audit records.

Acceptance checks

• Agent traces show bounded behavior and explain why tools or sources were used.
• A reviewer can identify when the agent should refuse, escalate, or request human approval.
• The workflow or agent has a named owner who can pause it and explain its last run.
• Failures produce enough audit, diagnostics, and notification context for another operator to respond.

Common mistakes

• Turning a useful prompt into automation before defining trigger, owner, input scope, approval rule, and failure handling.
• Ignoring noisy alerts or failed runs until operators stop trusting the workflow surface.

Related operations

• Review the Agents feature.
• Use the agent tutorial for a bounded first build.
• Use Workflow Safety before enabling recurring automation.
• Use Automation Safe Mode and Kill Switches before production automation rollout.
• Review Audit Log Review after the first production runs.
• Use Model Evaluation and Regression Review before broad agent or workflow rollout.
• Use Playbooks and Quick Actions for repeatable structured tasks.
• Use Prompt Template Governance before sharing reusable instructions.
• Use Playbook Import Export and Agency Reuse before reusing client workflows.
• Use Tool Validation and Schema Testing before exposing custom tools.
• Use Webhook and External Service Security before sending data outside WordPress.
• Use Insights and Reporting Review before acting on AI summaries.
• Use Content and SEO Workflows before AI-assisted publishing work.
• Use Localization and Translation Review before publishing multilingual copy.
• Use Media Library Asset Lifecycle before reusing generated assets.
• Use Marketing Studio Campaign Review before campaign launches.
• Use Analytics Attribution Review before acting on campaign summaries.