Sample briefing · Agents & reliability
Your AI agent timed out.
Did it still spend the money?
Imagine an agent authorized to issue one $40 refund. It sends the request, waits five seconds, then gets no reply. Should it try again?
Not as a new refund. A timeout tells you the reply is missing. It does not tell you whether the money moved.
Both can look like the same timeout.
One check to take to your team
Ask: “If the reply disappears after a refund succeeds, which record stops us issuing another one?” Look for a saved reference for the approved refund and the provider’s documented recovery process. If the outcome stays unknown, pause.
The full briefing walks through the two failures, the limits of retry protection and a mock-environment checklist.
Explore the refund-recovery checklist →Fictional example, not a payment-system test. Recovery depends on the provider’s rules.