Stack Innovations / Services / AI & Automation / Autonomous Agents
Autonomous Agents · AI & Automation

Goals in. Work out.
Agents that finish.

An autonomous agent takes a goal, decides what to do, calls real tools, reads what came back, and keeps going until the job is done — not a chatbot that answers, a worker that acts. Built on the Claude tool-use loop, gated on anything irreversible, and shipped to production.

/01Drag the complexity · watch the loop work harder
Live · agent loop, running
Success 94%
"Triage this ticket, refund if eligible, reply."
Tools available0
Steps taken0
Success rate0%
Cost / run$0
Task complexity · steps allowed 4 steps
Tasks finished autonomously94%
Manual handling cut−68%
Tool calls / run11×
Median time-to-done38s
Trusted by teams shipping agents to production at
02 — Outcomes

Agents that did the work.

A ledger of named agents where the line that moved was a task finished end-to-end — triaged, resolved, shipped — not a draft a human still had to do. 6 of 30 shown · ledger updates as agents scale.

Northwind Ops
Ops agent · Tickets + refunds
Reads the ticket, checks eligibility against policy, issues the refund through the billing API behind an approval gate, then closes the loop with a reply
−68%Manual handling
Cobalt Research
Research agent · Market briefs
Plans a search tree, pulls sources, cross-checks claims, and writes a cited brief — running the tool-use loop across web, database, and code until the question is actually answered
9.4×Briefs / analyst-day
Vera Triage
Triage agent · Inbound queue
Classifies, routes, and resolves the simple cases itself; escalates the rest with a structured summary — pauses at the approval gate before anything that touches a patient record
−74%Time-to-first-action
Lumen DevEx
Coding agent · Bug fixes
Reproduces the issue, edits the code, runs the test suite as a tool, and opens a PR — looping on failures until the build is green, with a human gate before merge
+58%Issues auto-resolved
Drift Finance
Reconciliation agent · Ledgers
Matches transactions across systems, flags the breaks, drafts the journal entries, and waits for sign-off — every side-effectful write gated and logged for audit
−81%Reconciliation hours
Forge Sales
SDR agent · Enrich + reply
Enriches the lead, drafts a grounded reply from the CRM, books the meeting on the calendar tool, and updates the record — running unattended within a clear permission boundary
3.1×Replies / rep-hour
03 — The loop, live

It doesn't just answer.
It acts, then checks.

Give it a goal and watch the agent run: think about what's needed, call a tool, read the result, decide the next move — looping until it's done. That's the Claude tool-use loop: the model returns tool_use, your code runs the tool, feeds the result back, and the model continues. Switch on the approval gate and it pauses before anything irreversible.

Scratchpad · Goal: triage & resolve ticket
Think → Act → Observe
Triage this ticket, refund if the account is eligible, then reply.
Max steps · loop budget6
Run status · Claude tool-use loop
Press run — the agent will think, call tools, and loop until the goal is done.
Steps
Tools used
Status
The model decides which tool to call and when it's done — your code just runs the tools and feeds results back. Gate the irreversible ones (refunds, emails, writes) so a human approves before the agent acts.
04 — Anatomy of a run

A run, traced,
not a black box.

Every autonomous run leaves a trace: a plan, the tool calls it made, what it observed, where it reflected, and how it finished. This is the room we work in — each stage instrumented, each tool chosen for a reason, every side-effect logged.

Agent run · Northwind Ops · Ticket #4821
Steps 7 · Tools 4 · Status done
StageToolWhat happensSignal
PlanClaude Opus 4.8Read the goal, sketch a short plan, decide the first action to takeplanned
Tool callstool_use · MCPModel returns a tool_use block; runtime executes the tool, feeds the result backtool_use
Observationstool_resultTool output returns to the model as context for the next decisionobserved
ReflectSelf-check · scratchpadDecide: goal met, try another tool, or escalate — loop or finishloop
GateHuman-in-the-loopPause before irreversible actions (refund, email, write) for approvalgated
ActBilling API · idempotentExecute the approved side-effect once, with an idempotency key+1 write
Finalstop_reason · end_turnGoal met — agent returns the result and stops the loop cleanlydone
TraceSentry · OpenTelemetryEvery step, tool, and token logged for replay, audit, and debugginglogged
green ran & logged
live the stage running in the demo above
amber gated · waiting on human approval
01
05 — Ship to production

Scope the goal.

Before a tool is wired, we pin down what "done" means, where the agent is allowed to act, and what must never happen without a human. An autonomous run is only as safe as the boundary you draw around it.

/ Week 00 · Scope & guardrails
GoalWhat "done" looks like, in measurable terms — not a vibe, a verdict
PermissionsWhich systems the agent may read, write, and act on — scoped tight
GatesThe irreversible actions that always pause for human approval
BudgetMax steps, max spend, and a hard stop so it can never run away

Wire the tools.

An agent is its tools. We define each one — name, schema, what it does — so the model can call it cleanly, and expose them over MCP so the same tools work across runtimes. Garbage tools, garbage actions; this is where most agents quietly fail.

/ Week 01 · Tools & MCP
DefineTyped tool schemas · clear names · tight inputs
ExposeMCP servers · reusable across agents and runtimes
Side-effectsIdempotency keys · retries · every write logged
PermissionsPer-tool scopes · least privilege by default
SandboxCode & browser tools run isolated, never on prod

Close the loop.

The model returns a tool_use block, your runtime executes the tool, the result goes back as context, and the model decides again. Think → Act → Observe, repeating until stop_reason says done — with a hard step budget so it always terminates.

/ Week 02 · Loop & control
Tool-use loop · run until stop_reason end_turn
Max-steps budget · hard stop, no runaway
tool_result fed back as model context
Parallel tool calls where it's safe to fan out
Managed Agents for a hosted, durable loop

Gate the irreversible.

Reading is free; acting is not. Refunds, emails, deletes, writes — anything you can't undo pauses for human approval, or runs only inside a tight permission boundary. The agent proposes; a person (or a policy) disposes.

/ Week 03 · Human-in-the-loop

Evaluate honestly.

Run a frozen set of real tasks every change and score it — did it finish, was it correct, did it stay in bounds, what did it cost. No "looked great in the demo." A success rate that moves, or the change doesn't ship.

/ Week 04 · Evaluate
Task success94% — goals finished without a human stepping in
In-bounds100% — never acted outside its permission scope
Avg steps5.8 — efficient loops, no aimless wandering
Escalation rate6% — handed off cleanly when unsure

Ship & watch.

Live with durable execution for long runs, tracing on every step, and alerts when an agent loops too long or drifts out of bounds. We watch success as the world changes underneath it, and keep the agent finishing the job as your systems evolve.

/ Ongoing · Ship & watch
Durable runs · Temporal
Step-level tracing
Runaway-loop alerts
Permission boundaries
Approval gates on writes
Idempotent side-effects
Weekly task eval
Human-in-the-loop review
06 — Why it compounds

A tended agent gets sharper.

Every failed run feeds the next: a missed case tightens a tool, a wrong action adds a gate, a wandering loop sharpens the plan. Ship-and-forget agents drift as your systems change underneath them. Evaluated and tended, task success compounds.

Tended by Stack Innovations — task success climbs as tools, gates, and plans tighten
Ship-and-forget — plateaus, then drifts as systems change and edge cases pile up
Representative of a typical 12-month engagement · task success on a frozen evaluation set.
07 — Tools · honest kit

The kit, shown.

The models, runtimes, and tools we actually wire together to plan, call, observe, gate, and finish. No mystery framework — just the kit that keeps an agent finishing the job.

Reasoning
Claude Opus 4.8
Hosted loop
Managed Agents
Tool protocol
MCP
Capability
Tool use
Orchestration
LangGraph
Durable runs
Temporal
Runtime
Python
Serving
FastAPI
State
Postgres
Observability
Sentry
Comms
Slack
Code & CI
GitHub
Start the build

Stop drafting.
Start finishing. Goals in.

A free agent design session to start — bring one real, repetitive task your team grinds through, and we'll map the loop, the tools, and the gates it would need, then show you a working agent run against your own scenario. A prototype, not a pitch.

Get an agent design session
Accent
Hero shader
Motion