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Field Guide of Useful Agents

Your team is lean. Your workload is not.

Custom AI agents for small teams with repeatable work, unclear handoffs, and too many bottlenecks.

Notes on capacity, workflow, and controlled automation by Aboriginal Armadillo

not a pitch deck

start with the work

Start a Workflow Intake

01 / Field Observation

The work scaled before the system did.

Small teams can run for a long time on memory, inboxes, documents, dashboards, and one person who knows how everything actually works. Then the work gets heavier. The informal system starts to leak.

not just busy. under-instrumented.

Symptoms

  • The same questions keep getting answered by the same person.
  • Follow-up depends on memory instead of a system.
  • A new hire sounds urgent, but the job is still fuzzy.
incoming work
email, docs, dashboards, spreadsheets
one person with the context
manual follow-up, reporting, checking, routing
delay, rework, hiring pressure
context bottleneck
this is where the pain becomes a hiring conversation

Common misread

Looks like: We need another person right now.

May be: The workflow is undefined, manual, or trapped in one person's context.

First check: Which parts repeat, which parts require judgment, and which resources already exist?

context bottleneck

this is where the pain becomes a hiring conversation

Before you hire around the bottleneck, inspect the work.

02 / Proposed Intervention

Turn repeatable work into a controlled agent system.

Aboriginal Armadillo builds agents around specific workflows. We look at the work, the available tools, the data, the documents, and the points where a person still needs to decide. Then we build the system around that reality.

Useful agent: A workflow-specific system with a job, boundaries, tools, and review points.

inputs
docs
dashboards
email
spreadsheets
APIs
controlled agent
drafts, checks, summaries, alerts, routed tasks
human review where judgment matters

An agent can help with

It should not replace professional judgment, approve risky actions without review, or pretend physical-world work is software.

The goal is not autonomy. The goal is useful capacity.

03 / Field Procedure

Start with one workflow.

You do not need a finished AI strategy. Bring one workflow that is slow, manual, unclear, or too dependent on one person.

one workflow is enough

  1. Start a workflow intake

    Send the workflow and where it gets stuck.

  2. Inspect the shape

    We look for repetition, available resources, judgment points, and risk.

  3. Build the useful part

    If it fits, we build around the tools and review loops already in play.

  4. Test and deploy

    We test on real examples, roll out with limits, and refine from use.

workflow intake
inspection
fit decision
not agent-shaped
build path
tested agent
controlled rollout
not everything should become an agent
scope before build

not everything should become an agent

scope before build

Read the full method

04 / Evidence Drawer

Records from the workshop.

Agent records and artifacts from the workbench.

Selected records

Have a workflow under observation?

Send one messy workflow. We will help decide whether it is worth turning into an agent, a system, a hire, or nothing at all.

one workflow is enough

not every answer is an agent

Start a Workflow Intake