Exercise - Trace Your Own Agent

Pick a real task in your product that takes a person several steps across more than one system.

Watch someone do it, or do it yourself, and write down every step including the dead ends. The dead ends matter most.

Run the loop-mapping prompt. Compare its traces against what you actually observed.

Count the steps in the easy case and the awkward case. The ratio between them is your cost and latency variability, remember it for Chapter 6.

Write a first draft of your give-up condition: how many steps, how long, and what the agent hands over when it stops.