Question 1

Will this ever actually recommend not using an agent?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and it does so deliberately. High-volume, low-judgment, high-stakes tasks score toward Deterministic Workflow because that's genuinely the better engineering call, not because the tool is being cautious. Diagnosing before recommending is the whole point.

Question 2

What's the difference between an agent and a deterministic workflow?

Accepted Answer

A deterministic workflow executes a fixed, known sequence of steps every time. An agent decides its own next action based on context, which is more flexible but also less predictable, harder to test exhaustively, and more expensive per run.

Question 3

What does 'hybrid' actually mean in practice?

Accepted Answer

Most of the task runs as a fixed, testable sequence. Only the specific step that requires judgment, like classifying an ambiguous case or choosing between several valid next actions, gets routed to an agent or a human. The rest stays deterministic and cheap.

Question 4

Does a high score guarantee an agent is the right call?

Accepted Answer

No — it means an agent is architecturally justified for this task, not that any agent implementation will work. Tool permissions, evaluation, memory, and failure recovery still have to be engineered properly. See Agent Engineering for what that involves.

Question 5

What if the task changes over time?

Accepted Answer

Reassess it. A task that starts high-volume and repetitive can grow more variable as edge cases accumulate, and the right architecture can shift from workflow to hybrid as a result. This isn't a one-time decision.

Agent Readiness Assessment

How much judgment does each step require?

About the Assessment