A pattern I keep seeing in agentic AI pitches

Almost every "agentic AI" pitch I see leads with what the agent can do. Almost none of them lead with what happens when it does the wrong thing.

Capability is the easy 80%. The guardrails — validating tool calls before they execute, a memory boundary so context doesn't bleed across tasks, a kill switch that actually works mid-task instead of only before it starts — are the hard 20% that determine whether it's safe to actually deploy, not just impressive to demo.

If your evaluation of a vendor or a build plan doesn't include that 20%, you're evaluating the wrong 80%. Happy to compare notes on what that 20% should look like for your product.