Stop comparing features: 7 practical questions for picking an AI agent tool
e7h4n_z · reddit · 2026-09-01
A founder on Reddit shares a grounded framework for choosing AI agent tools, arguing homepages all promise the same memory/tool-use/autonomy features, so evaluation should shift to concrete questions:
- Define the job in one sentence — e.g. "every morning check the support inbox, draft replies, flag refunds" is far easier to evaluate than "a customer support agent".
- What access does it need — browser, local files, email, CRM; this rules out tools that will hit permission walls.
- What it may do without approval — after an agent messaged an ex-boss on Slack, the author now maintains an explicit "safe actions" whitelist.
- How much babysitting after week one — first runs often succeed, then quality decays; count repeated corrections and restarts.
- True cost per completed task — subscription, model usage, retries, plus your own fix-up time.
- Exit-ability — can you export prompts, memory, workflows and logs, avoiding lock-in.
Their test: run two tools on the same real task for a week and track completions, corrections, failures, recovery time and total cost.
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