Two suppliers for a bakery group — a week's wait, an outsider's answer, and one agent directing three

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Summary#

Crumb & Crust is a group of bakeries. Its purchasing office buys flour, butter and milk, and has to decide which companies it buys them from. This is the story of two of those decisions in the same fortnight: a mill, and a dairy.

It shows three things the first story did not: somebody outside the company answering, a wait of a week, and several agents working at once.

Description#

Who is involved?#

Part one: the mill#

Monday. Noor starts the onboarding of Hollin Mill. The office does not have the mill's details, so the process asks for them: Greta Hollin, at the mill, is sent a link to a short form — registration number, country, the payment term the mill asks for. No [[agent-guide-glossary#agent|agent]] has done anything yet.

Wednesday. Greta fills the form in. The mill is registered in England and asks to be paid in 45 days. The process takes her answers and moves to vetting.

The Vetter looks the company up: registered 1987, active, nothing against it. But 45 days is more than the office's standard 30, and its instructions say that is the purchasing lead's to accept. So it asks him:

The question arrives with its context: "Our standard term is 30 days. The register shows nothing against the company."

The following week. Tariq is away. For seven days nothing runs. The Vetter has made two calls to its AI model so far, and that number does not move. The onboarding says what it is waiting for, and on whom.

The Wednesday after. Tariq answers: "Yes, 45 days is fine for a mill." The Vetter's work goes on from exactly where it stopped, with his answer in hand. Now it wants to clear the mill to trade — and that is not its to do alone. A second item arrives in Tariq's [[agent-guide-glossary#inbox|inbox]]: an approval, showing the supplier, 45 payment days, and what the Vetter had looked at.

He approves. The mill is cleared as Tariq, and the onboarding ends at Trading. The record of the work says so in three plain lines: it asked Tariq Aziz a question because it chose to; Tariq Aziz answered after 7 days; Tariq Aziz approved, and it ran as them.

What if somebody else had said yes?#

In another run, the same [[agent-guide-glossary#proposal|proposal]] comes to Noor, because she is the one who asked. She approves it. A buyer may not clear a supplier, so nothing is cleared, and she is told: "It was approved, and could not be done."

A yes is never more than the person saying it could have done themselves. Noor is also not offered "let it do this alone from now on"; Tariq is.

Part two: the dairy#

Monday. Noor asks for Saltmarsh Dairy to be qualified. That is three questions, for three kinds of knowledge, so the Qualifier hands them on — all three in one go:

• The Finance assessor looks the dairy up, notes "one charge outstanding", and reports: sound, with one routine charge. Done.
• The Safety assessor reads the last inspection: the cold store passed; the dry store was not seen. It concludes that only chilled goods are shown to be safe and wants to restrict what the dairy may deliver. A restriction changes things, so it is proposed.
• The Terms reader starts on the dairy's standard terms, which are long. Its allowance was small on purpose. It runs out, and the reading is stopped.

The page of the work shows all of that at once:

One line at the top says what the whole thing is waiting for: the Safety assessor, which waits for a decision from Noor Haddad.

The proposal went to Noor, though it came from two agents down: it is put to the person the whole job is for, and says through whom it comes — "Safety assessor, working for Qualifier".

Thursday. Three days pass. Nothing runs. Noor approves the restriction: "Chilled goods only." It is written as changed by the Safety assessor, for Noor. The Safety assessor finishes; the Qualifier, which was waiting for it, goes on and decides:

• Take the dairy on.
• Chilled goods only, until the dry store is inspected.
• The terms were not read: the reading ran out of its allowance. Have them read before the first order.

The agent in charge did not hide the part that failed. It was told how that part ended and what it had found, and it said so in its answer.

Part three: a decision that belongs to Finance#

Clearing a supplier is purchasing's decision. A payment term is money, and at Crumb & Crust money is Finance's. So the Vetter's job of settling a term says where its proposals go: to Finance's inbox, not to whoever asked.

Three things follow, each tested:

• Noor asks for the dairy's term to be settled. Nothing appears in her inbox. The work says it waits for "a decision from the Finance queue". When she tries to approve it directly she is refused: the proposal is decided by Finance.
• In another run it is Ilse who asks. She also works Finance's inbox, so she can see the item. When she tries to approve it there she is told: "This decides something that was asked for you, so it is not yours to answer. It waits for the people of Finance."
• Rosa, in Finance, reads what the agent proposes and what it looked at, and rejects it: "We pay this dairy in 14 days." The agent is given her reason.

Asking an agent for something is not the same as approving it.

What did it cost?#

The dairy's qualification was nine calls to an [[agent-guide-glossary#model|AI model]] across four agents, and the page above shows what each piece cost and what the whole cost. The Terms reader could spend at most its own small allowance, and was stopped there; the other pieces were not touched.

The amounts on the screens are fractions of a cent because this is a test: the model is a scripted stand-in with made-up prices. What the tests check is the arithmetic. The whole costs what its pieces cost, and no piece spends past its share.

Where is this written down?#

In the test app of the kit that joins agents to the inbox. a_supplier_is_taken_on_from_its_application_to_trading is the mill; a_supplier_is_qualified_by_an_agent_in_charge_and_three_specialists is the dairy; whoever_the_work_is_for_does_not_decide_it_from_the_queue_she_works is Ilse and Rosa. No AI model is called in any of them.

What to read next#

• A parcel that never came — a case owned until it is right, closed, and opened again — work with no fixed steps: a lost parcel, settled and reopened
• What stays under people's control — ten promises, and where each is shown — the promises this story relied on
• What release 1 does not include — what release 1 does not include

Go deeper#

• Shape 2 — work done for people, with approvals — for developers: the smallest app with an approval in it
• Shape 4 — a team of agents with a coordinator — for developers: the smallest team of agents
• An agent's proposals and questions in a person's inbox, and an inbox item in an agent's hands (Agents.HumanRequests kit) — proposals and questions in the inbox
• An agent hands work on to other agents — at once, typed, and never with more than it holds (Agents kit) — handing work on
• Requests to people — a question, an approval, a form, and the answer coming back (HumanRequests kit) — the form behind a link, for somebody with no account
• Osysharp.Agents.HumanRequests — an agent's proposals and questions, in the inbox of the person they are for — the kit this story's app tests