The Three Reliability Modes I See in Production AI Agents

After running autonomous AI agents in production for months, I've noticed a pattern: agents fall into three reliability categories. The Three Modes 1. Scripted Agents (High Reliability, Low Autonomy) These agents follow strict decision trees. They're predictable but limited. Great for repetitive tasks where variation is low. 2. Prompted Agents (Medium Reliability, Medium Autonomy) These use LLM prompts to make decisions. flexible but unpredictable under edge cases. The mode where most teams operate. 3.