Four examples a small business can actually run. Each one shows what the agent does, what the human still does, and what to watch out for — because the human part is the workflow, not an afterthought.
Agent does: transcribes the recording, drafts a summary, and pulls out decisions and action items with owners.
Human does: corrects names and numbers, confirms the action items, and sends the notes.
Watch out for: names, dates, and figures are where transcription and summarising most often go wrong — check those first, not last.
Agent does: sorts incoming mail by urgency, drafts replies in your tone, and flags anything involving money, deadlines, or complaints.
Human does: reads every draft before it goes out, and handles the flagged messages personally.
Watch out for: never let an agent send mail on its own while you are still learning it. A draft is a suggestion; a sent email is a commitment.
Agent does: searches for news about your competitors and market, and drafts a short weekly briefing with sources.
Human does: spot-checks the sources behind any claim that would change a decision, and throws out anything unsourced.
Watch out for: confident summaries with no source are the most common failure. If a claim matters, verify it at the original source.
Agent does: when a form comes in, creates the customer record, notifies the right person, and logs the follow-up task.
Human does: defines exactly what happens for each case, and reviews the log weekly for anything that landed in the wrong place.
Watch out for: this one is closer to plain automation than to judgement — keep the rules explicit, and do not let it touch payments or refunds without a human step.
Agent drafts, human decides, system records. The workflows that work are the ones where the human checkpoint is built in before anything external happens — not added after a mistake. If a workflow has no checkpoint, it is not ready, whatever the tool promises.
Price any of these honestly before you commit: run it through the estimator → with your real review time included. Find the tools for each workflow in the directory →, and check whether a task is ready with the agent-readiness checklist →.