A pricing agent that can set any price is terrifying. A pricing agent that can move a price by at most 8% per cycle is a colleague. Same model, same data. The difference is one number.
Why step limits work
Agents fail in two ways: they are wrong, or they are wrong repeatedly in the same direction. A step limit makes the first harmless and the second visible. If a price drifts 8% a day for four days, a human sees a 30% move in the dashboard and asks why, long before it becomes a catastrophe.
Choosing the step
- Start with the largest change a competent human would make without asking anyone.
- Halve it for the first month.
- Widen it only when your evaluation data says the agent's moves were right more often than the humans' were.
Step limits for things that are not prices
| Domain | Step limit |
|---|---|
| Outreach | Max sends per day, per segment, per agent |
| Refunds | Max amount per decision, max total per hour |
| Inventory | Max units reallocated per run |
| Content | Max pages changed per publish |
At estaie, step limits let the pricing agent automate roughly 70% of pricing work. The remaining 30% is exactly the moves that exceeded the limit and went to a person. That split is a feature.
Do this today: add one number to each decision in your inventory: the maximum change per cycle. Put it in config, not in the prompt.