Determinism first
If every decision in a process can be written down, write it down. Deterministic automation is cheaper to run, easier to test and simpler to audit. Reasoning is worth its cost only where inputs are unstructured or judgement is genuinely required.
A short screening test
Before proposing an agent we ask four questions.
- Is the input unstructured language, documents or images?
- Does the task require judgement that resists enumeration?
- Is there a tolerable error path with human recovery?
- Does the value of the work exceed the cost of the reasoning?
References