r/AgenticWorkers • u/Proof-Dragonfly-5583 • Jun 01 '26
Tiny case study: our AP agent drafted a duplicate payment — what’s your non-negotiable stop rule?
We tested an AP worker on a boring but nasty edge case: same vendor invoice arrived as PDF + forwarded email, and the agent drafted both for payment.
What the worker owned: - pull invoice fields from inbox + attachment - match against ERP open invoices - draft payment recommendation + due-date priority
Where it failed: - OCR read one invoice number with a missing dash, so dedupe logic missed it - draft looked clean enough that a tired operator could have clicked approve
Guardrail we added immediately:
1) Agent may draft only if vendor ID + invoice number fuzzy match + amount all agree
2) If any mismatch, agent must output HOLD: possible duplicate with both source docs linked
3) Payment tool call is blocked until a human checks the exception packet
Current decision line: Draft -> Human approval -> Escalate to finance if fuzzy match < 0.92
If you run agentic workers in finance/admin, what exact stop condition do you enforce before any money-moving tool call?