Agent Guardrails: Automation the Owner Can Trust

RULE: An agent drafts; a person approves. The agent earns the right to act alone, one type of action at a time, from the owner's own approval record.

A small business has one reputation. One invented price, one rude reply or one email sent fifty times costs more than the agent saves in a month. These guardrails make the agent safe to turn on and easy to trust more over time.

1. Draft, approve, send

Every customer-facing action goes through a state machine:

drafted -> approved -> sent
        -> edited   -> sent        (the edited text is stored as the preferred answer)
        -> rejected                (with a reason)