Agency17 June 20264 min read
Building a senior-colleague AI: versioned skills and gated tools
A loose-cannon agent is dangerous and a shackled one is useless. The way out is to put the judgment in versioned, fail-closed skill definitions and to gate which tools the agent can touch per skill and per turn. Capable without being a liability.
The short answer
A loose-cannon agent is a liability and a shackled one is useless. The middle is built, not prompted: put the agent's judgment in versioned, fail-closed skill definitions, gate which tools it can call per skill and per turn, and put a confirmation step in front of anything irreversible. The agent stays capable because each skill grants real ability, and stays safe because it can only ever reach the tools the current skill allows.
Short version: there are two easy ways to build an agent and both are wrong. A loose-cannon agent with every tool and one giant prompt is a liability. A shackled agent that has to ask permission for everything is useless. The version worth shipping sits in the middle, and it is built, not prompted: the judgment lives in versioned, fail-closed skill definitions, the tools are gated per skill and per turn, and anything irreversible goes through a confirmation step. We built one for a fiduciary, where the agent has to be genuinely useful and genuinely safe at the same time.