Production AI Agent Checklist: 20 Must-Haves Before You Scale

Most agent incidents are not caused by exotic model failure.

They are caused by missing basics.

Use this checklist before scaling any agentic workflow beyond a pilot.

Architecture Checklist

• Clear agent role boundaries
• No over-privileged execution role
• Deterministic handoff between stages
• Explicit failure states and retries

Governance Checklist

• Repo and branch allowlists
• Command allowlists
• Capability flags by environment
• Global and scoped kill switches

Quality and Evaluation Checklist

• Required test gates
• Structured evaluator scoring
• Block/warn/pass thresholds
• Fallback behavior for failed checks

Observability Checklist

• Correlation IDs across all stages
• Tool-call logging with timestamps
• Decision logs for evaluator outcomes
• Fast path for incident reconstruction

Human Review Checklist

• Explicit merge ownership
• Policy override workflow
• Escalation path for high-risk changes
• Audit trail for approvals

Rollout Checklist

• Gradual rollout by team or repo
• Baseline metrics captured pre-launch
• Weekly reliability review in first month
• Exit criteria for rollback mode

Final Take

If your team can answer “yes” to these items, you likely have a production-ready AI agent foundation.

If not, fix the controls first. Scale only multiplies architecture decisions you already made.