Trust in an agent is earned in a specific sequence, and trying to skip steps is why capable agents go unused. People delegate small reversible things first, watch what happens, and expand from there.

How Trust Actually Builds

WEEK 1 Watches every step. Approves everything.

Checks the agent's work afterwards. Slower

than doing it manually, and that's fine.

WEEK 3 Stops checking the read-only steps. Still

reads every draft before it goes.

WEEK 6 Skims the drafts. Approves quickly on routine

cases, slows down on unusual ones.

WEEK 12 Delegates whole categories. Reviews a sample.

ONE BAD INCIDENT resets this to week 1, or past it.

Trust builds in weeks and collapses in one afternoon,

which is the asymmetry your whole design should respect.

The practical implication: design for week one, not week twelve. A first-run experience that shows everything and asks permission often feels slow to your team, who have used it a hundred times. To the user seeing it for the first time, that visibility is what makes them willing to try it twice.

Agentic AI and MCP for Product Managers

Module 1What 'Agentic' Actually Means

Module 2How an Agent Actually Works

Module 3MCP: What It Is and Why You Should Care

Module 4Designing the Tool Layer

Module 5Permissions and the Human in the Loop

Module 6Evaluating Agents

Module 7Cost, Latency and Unpredictability

Module 8Designing What the User Sees

Module 9Risk and Blast Radius

Module 10When an Agent Is the Wrong Answer

Module 11Final Project: Design One Real Agent End to End

Module 12Appendix: The Prompt Library

Building Trust One Delegation at a Time