What an AI agent actually does in a small business
Plain description of the work an agent takes on in a shop, the work it does not, and how to tell which is which before you spend anything.
Start with the sentence, not the software
An agent is worth considering when you can finish this sentence: "every day, someone here spends an hour doing X, and X follows roughly the same steps each time." If you cannot finish it, the problem is probably a process that has never been written down, and no software fixes that. If you can finish it twice, you have a shortlist.
What it does well
Reading things that arrive in an awkward format and turning them into something structured. Chasing people on a schedule. Drafting a reply from information you already have. Filing, categorising and totalling. Noticing that something expected did not arrive. Summarising a day into the half-page you would actually read.
What it does badly
Anything where being wrong is expensive and being confident is easy. Pricing a job it has not seen. Deciding whether a customer is worth keeping. Anything that depends on a relationship, or on having been in the room. It will produce a confident answer to all of these, which is exactly the danger.
The test worth applying
For every task you are considering handing over, ask: if this were wrong and nobody checked, what would it cost? Under a few minutes of annoyance, let it run. Anything above that, the agent drafts and a person approves. That single question gets you most of the way to a safe design.
If you want this applied to your own shop rather than read in the abstract, send us the workflow and we will write back.