What actually breaks when AI leaves the demo and meets real operations — and how to keep it running.
Teams spend weeks choosing a model and no time deciding what the automation is allowed to spend. The cost ceiling is the design decision that determines whether an AI workflow survives contact with real volume.
Most teams deploying AI have no idea whether it is doing its job. Four metrics — attempted, succeeded, escalated, cost-per-task — turn a hopeful deployment into an observable one.
The gap between a working AI demo and a working AI system is not intelligence — it is operations. Here is what actually kills agents in production, and what to build instead.
Most automation programmes fail because they start with the hardest or the most visible process. A short, practical way to score candidate workflows and pick the one that will actually ship.