{
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  "slug": "stop-prompting-agents-start-managing-workers",
  "title": "Stop Prompting Agents. Start Managing Workers.",
  "thesis": "Agent workers become dependable only when organizations stop treating them as intelligent prompt boxes and start managing their work through explicit roles, encoded procedures, bounded authority, evidence, measurement, and earned autonomy.",
  "abstract": "A practical operating model for meaningful agent work: begin with a job, encode the work, bound the assignment, supervise through evidence, measure results, and expand autonomy only when repeatable proof earns a larger trust envelope.",
  "topics": [
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    "operating-contracts",
    "earned-autonomy",
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    "management-systems"
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  "date": "2026-07-21",
  "dateLabel": "Source dated",
  "published": false,
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  "updated": "2026-07-21",
  "sourceDates": {
    "created": "2026-07-18",
    "updated": "2026-07-21"
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      "description": "Security guidance for organisational adoption; it is not a general productivity benchmark.",
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    {
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      "description": "Vendor-authored guidance; use for architecture context, not neutral market comparison.",
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  "author": {
    "name": "Tony Malott",
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      "label": "Separate useful intelligence from production architecture",
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