Automation moves a known object from state A to state B. An agent chooses among tools when the next step is not fully known.
If the rule can be written as “when X, do Y”, you do not need an agent. You need a workflow with an audit log and a human exception path.
Agents earn their place when the input is messy — email, documents, mixed systems — and the output must still land in a structured record.
Keep a human on irreversible steps: payments, contracts, customer-facing messages that commit the company. The stack is infrastructure, data, agents, then oversight.
