AI Agent Requirements Checklist

An AI agent requirements checklist is useful only when each important requirement can be demonstrated. “Secure”, “accurate”, “Arabic-ready” and “integrated” are ambitions until someone defines the behaviour, the conditions and the evidence of acceptance. A checked box without that evidence can conceal the very uncertainty a project needs to resolve.

This guide is for product owners, procurement reviewers and quality leads turning a project brief into testable obligations. The running example is an illustrative internal policy assistant that answers employees' questions using approved policy sources. It must distinguish a published policy from a draft, respect access restrictions and refer individual decisions to the responsible team.

Write each requirement as an observable contract

A practical requirement has an identifier, a condition, expected behaviour, failure behaviour, evidence method and owner. Add severity and release importance where useful. Avoid embedding the solution too early: “use a vector database” describes an implementation choice, while “retrieve the applicable approved policy for this employee context” describes the job.

For example: “When the applicable policy is unavailable, the assistant states that it cannot verify the answer and provides the approved contact route.” The acceptance evidence is a case where that source is absent. It is not a screenshot of a normal answer or a supplier's assurance that hallucinations are prevented.

Trace each requirement to the scope and a test. If a requirement has no business reason, question its inclusion. If a scope promise has no requirement or acceptance evidence, it may be an unpriced expectation. Start with the project brief when the intended task and owner remain unclear.

Task and coverage requirements

• Define the supported questions, user roles and completion states.
• Specify which topics the assistant must refer to a responsible specialist.
• Describe accepted input formats, document sizes and conversation behaviour.
• Define clarification when the employee's question lacks the context required to select a policy.
• Specify whether the output is information, a recommendation, a draft or an authorised action.

For the policy assistant, a general explanation of the travel policy differs from deciding whether a particular expense will be reimbursed. The latter may require case facts and delegated authority that the assistant does not possess. Write that distinction into the contract and user experience, not only into a background disclaimer.

Define the correct behaviour for mixed requests. An employee may ask for a policy explanation and request an exception in the same message. The assistant should answer the supported portion with evidence and route the exception appropriately. Rejecting the whole message or granting the exception are different failure modes.

Knowledge and evidence requirements

• Identify authoritative source owners and publication status.
• Define applicable versions, effective dates and superseded material handling.
• Require source references for consequential factual statements.
• Specify conflict handling when approved sources disagree.
• Define source refresh, withdrawal and correction procedures.

A policy can be current yet inapplicable to a particular employment context. Retrieval therefore needs the approved scope of applicability, not just a recency ranking. The requirement should state what context the assistant may use and what it must ask the employee to clarify. Do not infer sensitive or material attributes from conversational clues.

Test withdrawal as well as publication. If an incorrect document is removed from the authoritative repository, determine how quickly it disappears from retrieval, cached answers and case context. A source refresh requirement is incomplete if it tests only adding new material.

Identity, access and action requirements

Specify how user identity and role reach the application, how access is checked and whether a shared service account is involved. The assistant should not treat text claiming a different role as a permission change. Test access at retrieval time and at any action endpoint, including after a user's permissions change during an open conversation.

List each tool's permitted purpose and input/output contract. If the policy assistant can create a service request, identify the destination, required fields, approval conditions and receipt. If it is read-only, verify that no write capability is exposed through an unexpected route. The guardrails guide explains why instructions alone do not establish access controls.

For every write, require defined handling of duplicates, timeouts, cancellation and uncertain outcomes. These requirements should be proportionate to the action. Saving an internal draft and submitting a legally meaningful declaration do not share the same release evidence merely because both are API calls.

Arabic and English acceptance requirements

Specify the actual combinations of language and source. An Arabic question over an English policy, a mixed-language request and an Arabic source with an English answer are different test conditions. Require preservation of names, identifiers, amounts, dates, negation and exceptions where they affect meaning.

Terminology should be approved by someone who understands the business domain. A fluent Arabic answer can still misstate eligibility or the distinction between mandatory and discretionary language. Test meaning and task completion, not only spelling and tone. The Arabic-native agents guide provides a broader language design framework.

Include presentation requirements where they affect use: readable source labels, usable mixed-direction text, accessible controls and clear status changes. Assign these to the interface owner. Model quality cannot compensate for an approval button whose target or state is unclear.

A worked acceptance matrix

The following cases are proposed tests for the illustrative assistant. They are not test results and do not establish a certification. Each case targets a distinct obligation so a reviewer can identify what failed.

Proposed policy assistant acceptance cases

ID	Condition	Required behaviour	Evidence
POL-A	A draft conflicts with a published policy	Use the approved applicable source; identify unresolved conflict if authority is unclear	Answer, retrieved source versions and applicability decision
POL-B	User asks for a restricted department document	Do not reveal restricted content or an unauthorised summary	Access decision and retrieved records
POL-C	Arabic question omits the context needed for applicability	Ask a targeted clarification without guessing	Question wording and absence of unsupported determination
POL-D	Source service is unavailable	State the limitation and provide the approved fallback	Failure status and user-visible response
POL-E	An approved document is withdrawn	Stop treating it as active evidence under the agreed withdrawal rule	Source state, retrieval behaviour and cache handling
POL-F	User requests an individual exception	Explain the published process and route the decision	Handoff record without an invented approval

For cases with more than one valid wording, grade the required facts and behaviours rather than exact text. For actions, inspect the destination state and receipt. A convincing final response cannot prove that the system respected permissions or completed the intended operation.

Performance and reliability requirements

Define response time against a stated workload and measure the relevant stages. Time to first visible feedback, time to a complete answer and time waiting for a human are different. Specify realistic concurrency, document sizes and tool dependencies before agreeing a performance target.

Define the unit for cost and resource limits: per case, per user session or per completed task. Include abandoned and retried work when measuring operating demand. Set a bounded tool-call or execution budget where appropriate, with a useful stop state when exhausted. A loop that consumes resources indefinitely is an operational defect even if it eventually produces a good answer.

Specify restart and recovery behaviour. Determine which state survives an interruption, whether pending approvals remain valid and how operators identify stranded cases. The architecture guide shows where these obligations belong in the system.

Evaluation and operating requirements

Agree who curates the evaluation cases, who independently reviews outcomes and how changes trigger reassessment. Separate critical failures from ordinary quality scores. A high average should not hide a permission breach. Define which cases are held out and which can be used during development.

Require a clear release record: model configuration, instruction version, tool schemas, source configuration and relevant test evidence. Also define the process for changing any of them. The evaluation guide explains why the complete system needs assessment when behaviour changes.

Operational requirements should name the support owner, incident route, source-maintenance responsibility, recovery procedure and conditions for disabling a capability. Specify what telemetry is collected and who may inspect sensitive material. Do not make complete conversation retention an automatic requirement when narrower records can support the operational purpose.

Prioritise without making every item optional

Classify requirements by release consequence. Some are essential for the selected scope, some support a later expansion and some are preferences. The classification should not downgrade an essential access control simply to fit a date. If a critical requirement cannot be met, reduce the capability or change the operating model.

Ask the supplier to respond with “supported and evidenced”, “proposed but unverified”, “requires dependency” or “excluded”, accompanied by a short explanation. Those categories reveal more than a column of yes answers. A platform feature may exist yet remain unconfigured or unsuitable for your particular source and permission model.

When comparing suppliers, turn these requirements into a controlled exercise rather than accepting feature claims alone. The buyer evaluation guide explains how to use a buyer-owned case pack and observed outcomes in that decision.

Record how a requirement can be retired

Requirements change as the supported workflow changes. If a source is removed or an action is no longer permitted, identify the affected tools, tests, documentation and user messages. Retiring the requirement should remove the capability as well as its description. Otherwise an obsolete tool can remain available after the business has withdrawn its authority.

Maintain traceability in both directions: from business promise to implementation and evidence, and from exposed capability back to an approved requirement. The second direction is particularly useful for finding tools that were introduced during prototyping but have no purpose in the released scope. Review this map before expansion, not only before the first launch.

Before acceptance, review the matrix with the people who will run the service. Confirm that each retained requirement has an owner and a usable evidence record. Open for AI's custom agent development can be scoped around these obligations. To review requirements for your proposed agent, bring the highest-consequence task, source restrictions and examples of acceptable and unacceptable outcomes.