A writing assistant leaves the search to you
Take a delivery query: will the supplier deliver on Friday? In this illustrative example, you give a writing assistant the messages already at hand. It can summarise them and draft a reply. If none confirms Friday, you still need to find the confirmation and record the date. The summary helps with part of the work; the investigation remains yours.[S4]
The agent looks for the missing delivery confirmation itself
Now suppose you give an agent the goal and order reference. In our proposed setup, it may read the order and approved supplier records. A missing date leads it to look for a confirmation. If it finds one, it checks the order number and date before proposing an update. Its next step depends on what it finds; you do not have to choose each document yourself.
That leaves a separate decision: who may change the delivery record? Here, an employee must approve the change. If the confirmation is missing or contradictory, the agent brings the open question back to that person. It may not contact the supplier. As the diagram shows, delegating the search does not also grant permission to send messages or change records.[S4]
The agent can use the same generative model
The summary could come from the same generative model in either setup. The difference lies in the surrounding system: an agentic system can choose a next step, use a permitted tool and check the result. Generating content and directing the work can therefore belong to the same application.[S1][S2]
Tool access alone does not settle the distinction. A fixed workflow can also read records and call a model. Anthropic distinguishes those predefined paths from agents that dynamically direct their steps. For the delivery query, ask whether the search always follows the same path or needs to change with the evidence.[S2]
Decide what the agent may read and change
Take one delivery query from your team and write down which records the system may read, who approves a change and what confirms completion. In our example, completion means finding and checking the confirmation for the right order. These boundaries define the role we propose for the agent. Alongside its access to records, it needs a colleague who checks its work and helps when a question remains unresolved. This is what we mean by a Hybrid Organisation .[S4]
Use that task description with our agent-versus-workflow guide to decide whether it needs dynamic steps. The example is a proposed method, not a client case or evidence of savings.
