# I wouldn't let an AI agent make that promise

AI at work - September 16, 2026 - 3 min read

By the Zeke team

Original article: [I wouldn't let an AI agent make that promise](https://zeke.so/blog/ai-agents-judgment-line)

Finding a customer's current price does not authorize a renewal offer. Use one sources, output and review contract to draw the judgment line.

Ask an agent to prepare a renewal reply. The customer wants to keep their current price for another year. The agent can find the price in the signed order form. Can it write, 'Yes, we'll honor that for another year' and send the message?

The price is a fact. Extending it is a decision. Finding the order form doesn't tell the agent whether an exception is allowed, whether the account owner has agreed or what else the company would be committing to.

I wouldn't give an agent permission to make that promise just because it can find the context. It can still do a useful part of the work: locate the current terms, check the renewal policy, flag the exception and draft a reply for someone with authority to review.

The difficulty of the task doesn't settle who should do it. Reading an untidy set of account notes can be hard. Saying yes to a price can take one sentence. That sentence is where someone accepts the consequence, and the person responsible needs to make the call.

This is the judgment line to draw before automating a recurring task. Without it, 'handle renewals' leaves the agent to guess whether it is preparing a response or making an offer. You can remove that ambiguity before the first draft.

## Give the renewal task a contract

Write down the allowed sources, the output and the review step. For the renewal request above, the contract can be short enough to sit beside the task itself:

### Sources, output and review

SOURCES
Use the current signed order form, approved renewal policy and latest account notes. Check the effective dates. Flag anything inaccessible, expired or in conflict. An old quote is not evidence that the same offer is available now.

OUTPUT
Prepare a draft reply and a short note for the account owner. Separate the customer's current terms from the exception they are requesting. Link to the records supporting each claim. Leave unanswered questions visible. Do not invent an approval or send the reply.

REVIEW
The account owner checks the facts and identifies who can authorize the price exception. That person decides whether to offer it. A person approves the final message and any external commitment before it is sent; the agent's draft does not count as approval.

### Check the boundary before the first run

Read the assignment as if the agent will take every permission literally.

- [ ] I named the sources and how to check that they are current.
- [ ] I specified the exact output the agent should produce.
- [ ] I named the reviewer and the actions that require approval.
- [ ] I reserved consequential decisions and commitments for a person.

Review the first output against this contract, then record what needed correcting.

## Read the corrections before expanding the assignment

Run the task for four cycles and keep the reviewer's corrections beside the drafts. An inaccessible order form calls for fixing access. If the right form was available but the summary overstated its terms, the interpretation needs work. An expired quote points to a freshness problem. A promised discount that nobody approved means the agent crossed the boundary you set.

Those failures need different fixes. Tighten the source set, require a citation for the disputed claim or return that part of the task to a person. If the same mistake keeps appearing, changing the setup is more useful than correcting the sentence every week.

Zeke can use available company context to prepare a sourced brief and repeat a task on a schedule. The reviewer still needs to check that the source material is current and sufficient.

The goal for Zeke goes beyond knowledge capture. We're gradually building toward proactive actions based on those sources, with a person approving external actions and commitments.

The useful draft gets the account owner to the price decision with the evidence in front of them. It doesn't quietly make the offer while they're still reading.

## Work out where approval belongs

In a 15-minute demo with the founders, bring one recurring task and map the sources, draft output and decisions a person needs to own.

[Book a demo with the founders](https://calendar.google.com/calendar/appointments/schedules/AcZssZ20_GeldbmSN2zDe3SUIdCOy56OFGvciCn691y6IYQCbTCUpFEP5oa5_nIj4gwNjBIMHdpPMN0R?gv=true)

[Plan a follow-up with a clear review step](https://zeke.so/guides/follow-up-automation)

[Estimate your coordination cost](https://zeke.so/tools/coordination-cost-calculator)

[More from the Zeke blog](/blog)