Agent stories are easy to overrate because they demo well. Production value comes from reliability, permission boundaries, observability, and repeatable outcomes.
- Judge agents by repeatability, not showmanship. A slower agent that succeeds consistently is more valuable than a flashy demo that breaks on edge cases.
- Look for supervision and rollback paths. Real teams need approval layers, logs, and intervention points when an agent touches customer or company systems.
- Track where the model ends and the workflow begins. Many agent products are really orchestration or browser automation systems wrapped around foundation models.