Checklist

Agents & Autonomous Workflows — Safety & Monitoring Checklist

A practical, interactive checklist to evaluate whether an autonomous agent is appropriate, to define safe action boundaries, and to capture monitoring, controls, and recovery steps. Save responses for audits, follow-up, and continuous improvement.

Interactive Tool

Agents & Autonomous Workflows — Safety & Monitoring Checklist

Use this checklist to decide whether a task should run with autonomous agents, assistants, or a hybrid approach, and to document the safety, monitoring, and recovery controls required. Answer each item, attach evidence or notes, assign an owner, and set a review cadence. This turns a short safety review into a durable artifact you can revisit during incidents, audits, and retrospectives.

List precise actions the agent is allowed to perform (APIs, DB writes, external calls, financial transactions). Include limits and contextual constraints.
List operations the agent must never perform (data deletion, sending communications, making irreversible changes, accessing PII, etc.). Be explicit.
If yes, describe the approval workflow in the notes/evidence fields.
Who approves, SLA for approval, what constitutes explicit approval vs. notification. Leave blank if not applicable.
List concrete metrics to monitor (error rate, latency, decision drift, volume, unusual outputs) and alert thresholds.
Drift can mean model output drift, data distribution change, or behavior divergence. If yes, link to drift playbook in evidence.
Logs should show inputs, agent decisions, acted outputs, timestamps, and user approvals where applicable.
Describe how to undo agent actions, rollback data, or mitigate damage. Include runbook links and expected recovery time (RTO).
Confirm tests cover edge cases, failures, and security boundaries. If yes, provide test plan link in evidence.
If yes, specify rollout limits or guardrails in the notes (e.g., percent of traffic, time windows).
A kill switch should be accessible, tested, and part of the runbook. Describe trigger conditions in evidence.
Define limits on outbound actions, API calls, or transaction volumes to prevent runaway effects.
Which credentials, keys, and data sources does the agent need? Confirm principle of least privilege and credential rotation plans.
Describe validations, sanity checks, and human review safeguards to prevent unsafe outputs or downstream errors.
Mark yes if data access / actions may involve PII, PHI, financial records, or regulated activity.
Attach review summary, approvals, and any contractual or regulatory constraints. Leave blank if not applicable.
Runbooks should include triage steps, rollback instructions, and communication templates.
Paste a URL or reference to the runbook, test results, or logs.
Person or team accountable for agent safety, monitoring, and incident response.
How often will this checklist and the agent's behavior be reviewed?
Rate the risk of harm, compliance exposure, or financial loss if the agent misbehaves.
1.0 10.0
Choose the recommended mode based on controls and risk appetite.
Provide links to test results, logs, design docs, approvals, or any supporting artifacts.
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