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AI Agent Readiness Checklist
Seven sections to work through before an agent runs unattended. Every item traces to published engineering guidance rather than to opinion.
What Is In The AI Agent Readiness Checklist
- Data access, with read and write listed separately because that is where the risk sits.
- The tool interface, including descriptions, parameter shapes and error responses.
- Evaluation, so tool performance is measured rather than judged.
- Stopping conditions, and what happens when the cap is hit.
- Human sign off points, as a list of actions rather than a policy.
- Failure handling, including timeouts, bounded retries and visible planning steps.
- A short list to clear before it runs unattended.
Why The Tool Interface Section Is The Longest
Anthropic treats tool descriptions as prompt engineering in their own right, and says even small refinements to them can yield dramatic improvements. It also recommends prompt engineering your error responses so they communicate specific and actionable improvements rather than opaque error codes. That is a lot of leverage in a part of the build that often gets no review at all.
The full reasoning is in the article this accompanies: What Changes When An AI Agent Leaves The Demo For Production.
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