ai-agent-implementation-workflow

name	ai-agent-implementation-workflow
description	Implement agentic behaviors safely with clear tool boundaries, deterministic contracts, and incremental verification across prompts, tools, and orchestration code. Use when this capability is needed.
metadata	{"author":"Bryan-Roe"}

AI Agent Implementation Workflow

What This Skill Produces

Use this skill to implement or update agent behavior with stable contracts. The expected result is:

• explicit agent goal and decision boundaries
• predictable tool invocation flow
• schema-safe outputs for downstream consumers
• graceful fallback when tools/providers fail
• targeted tests or smoke checks proving behavior

When to Use

Use this skill when you need to:

• add a new agent workflow
• refine tool usage logic for an existing agent
• fix agent output/schema instability
• harden retry/fallback behavior in agent loops
• align agent behavior across CLI/API/UI surfaces

Common trigger phrases:

• "implement this agent behavior"
• "add tool-calling to the agent"
• "fix unstable agent responses"
• "make the agent robust"
• "agent output schema keeps breaking"

Procedure

1. Define contract first

   • Lock input/output schema and required fields.
   • Clarify what is best-effort vs required behavior.

2. Constrain tool boundaries

   • List which tools can be called and for what reasons.
   • Keep side-effecting actions explicit and auditable.

3. Implement minimal orchestration

   • Prefer small deterministic control flow over deep branching.
   • Make retries bounded and reason-aware.

4. Handle degraded mode intentionally

   • Return actionable errors when hard requirements are missing.
   • Use safe fallback only when it preserves contract meaning.

5. Verify behavior incrementally

   • Add focused tests/smokes for primary path + fallback path.
   • Confirm output schema is stable across paths.

6. Validate integration surface

   • Ensure consuming endpoints/UI can parse new outputs.
   • Avoid silent breaking changes in event/JSON structure.

Quality Checks

Before finishing, confirm that:

• output schema is deterministic and documented
• tool usage boundaries are explicit
• retries/fallbacks are bounded and observable
• failures are actionable, not silent
• integration consumers remain compatible

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Source: Bryan-Roe/Aria — distributed by TomeVault.