Phase 3 · Build · Point 6 of 12
Engineer for reliability with agent boundaries
Step budgets, typed interfaces, a policy engine, approval gates and fallback modes make behaviour stable.
Read the full lesson and take the quizThe goal is not an agent that can do anything. It is an agent that does the right thing inside a well-defined box, and reliably refuses or escalates outside it. Reliability is largely a function of constraints.
The secret to safe agents is not better prompts. It's system design.
A reliable pattern: the agent does the reasoning and orchestration, and a workflow engine provides the execution rails. Don't let a model freehand critical actions when deterministic workflows can enforce policy and correctness.