Buy autonomy as a service outcome.

Video caption

Buy autonomy as a service outcome.

Support and reversals can dominate inference spend.

Task classes, proof, latency, recovery and owner.

My rule: Do this because business value arrives after the exception path.

#EricFieldNotes

Full written post / accessibility read

If I buy an agentic workflow for a company, I want a contract around accepted work. How many tasks pass an agreed oracle? How many need staff rescue? How many reverse later? What is the customer consequence when they do?

A vendor can quote a low cost per automated attempt while the buyer pays people to inspect ambiguous outcomes and repair wrong ones. Without exception and recovery terms, the buyer cannot compare automation with the existing process.

Pilot the exact workflow on a resettable corpus. Agree on accepted-result definitions, false-action severity, time to human handoff, reversal process and evidence retention. Record the model and harness version so a route change triggers re-evaluation.

Scale only when the complete cost per accepted task improves and the owner can explain failures. An agent that transfers uncertainty to your staff has produced activity, not the autonomy you purchased.

#EricFieldNotes

Four-beat scene transcript

1. Buy autonomy as a service outcome.

If I buy an agentic workflow for a company, I want a contract around accepted work. How many tasks pass an agreed oracle? How many need staff rescue? How many reverse later? What is the customer consequence when they do?

Visual: The number of agent sessions is not the delivered unit.

2. The price of a run is not the cost of a result.

A vendor can quote a low cost per automated attempt while the buyer pays people to inspect ambiguous outcomes and repair wrong ones. Without exception and recovery terms, the buyer cannot compare automation with the existing process.

Visual: Support and reversals can dominate inference spend.

3. Specify a bounded service envelope.

Pilot the exact workflow on a resettable corpus. Agree on accepted-result definitions, false-action severity, time to human handoff, reversal process and evidence retention. Record the model and harness version so a route change triggers re-evaluation.

Visual: Task classes, proof, latency, recovery and owner.

4. Pay for verified throughput.

Scale only when the complete cost per accepted task improves and the owner can explain failures. An agent that transfers uncertainty to your staff has produced activity, not the autonomy you purchased.

Visual: Do this because business value arrives after the exception path.

Research and claim limits

• OpenAI Computer use API guide (S159)
• OSWorld 2.1 official repository (S162)
• NIST AI RMF 1.0 (S171)

The examples identified as illustrative or simulated are design probes, not reported incidents. Vendor specifications do not establish workload performance.