Is this workflow actually ready for an agent?

• This process has run the same way for at least a few dozen repetitionsA process still changing shape every few weeks means you'd be rebuilding the automation on the same cadence.
• You can list the 5–6 most common ways it goes wrong, not just the happy pathReadiness means naming the exceptions, not discovering them after launch.
• The data it depends on lives in a structured, reliable placeNot someone's inbox, a shared drive of inconsistently-named files, or a person's memory.
• One specific person would own it and get notified if something looked wrongNot a committee, and not a channel where responsibility diffuses.
• You know roughly how costly a wrong action would be, and how easy it is to detectThis is what determines how much autonomy the system should have on day one.
• There's a clear point where a human should be looped inA good handoff arrives with full context attached, not just a link to go find it.
• You're comfortable starting supervised, and earning more autonomy from real dataReliability is proven with production evidence, not assumed from a demo.
• Someone on the team can explain, in one sentence, what the agent is and isn't allowed to doIf nobody can answer that clearly, the scope isn't defined yet.

This is a self-assessment, not a formal audit — a low score isn't a rejection, and a high score isn't a guarantee. It's meant to make the honest conversation easier to have.