Default to skepticism when any of the following are true:
- Unbounded autonomy near harm. Safety, clinical decisions, quality release, OT setpoints, or unsupervised payment authority.
- Deterministic rules already exist. If a lookup table or validation rule solves it, don’t rent a probabilistic model to approximate the table.
- No workflow owner. Models don’t fix orphan processes.
- No measurable baseline. If you can’t measure before/after, you’re buying theater.
- Data you won’t control. Shadow IT pasting PHI or customer IP into consumer tools is a security problem first (security posture).
Ballast-AI will tell you when not to ship an agent. That outcome is a successful assessment. Book a conversation.