The helpfulness trap is something I've run into with customer service automation - turns out being too accomodating is just as much a failure mode as being unhelpful. The procedural guardrails angle is underrated tho. Everyone talks about prompt engineering but boring stuff like "check three suppliers before commiting" or "document in CRM before final decision" creates actual institutional memory. I've seen similar patterns in supply chain automation where single generalist agents kept makingweird tradeoffs because they lacked domain constraints. Splitting into specialized roles (procurement agent, pricing agent, fulfillment orchestrator) with minimal overlapping context actually improved reliability more than switching to bigger models. The cost per operation point is critical - at scale even small per-call expenses compound fast especially if your margin is already thin.
The helpfulness trap is something I've run into with customer service automation - turns out being too accomodating is just as much a failure mode as being unhelpful. The procedural guardrails angle is underrated tho. Everyone talks about prompt engineering but boring stuff like "check three suppliers before commiting" or "document in CRM before final decision" creates actual institutional memory. I've seen similar patterns in supply chain automation where single generalist agents kept makingweird tradeoffs because they lacked domain constraints. Splitting into specialized roles (procurement agent, pricing agent, fulfillment orchestrator) with minimal overlapping context actually improved reliability more than switching to bigger models. The cost per operation point is critical - at scale even small per-call expenses compound fast especially if your margin is already thin.