I can use AI chat, but I don't know how to give an AI agent real work without losing control

I start the morning with a normal piece of office work and use AI chat to help me summarise a supplied document. That part feels familiar: I can read the answer, compare it with the text and decide what to keep. The small win is that I get a useful first draft without changing any files or giving the AI wider access.

Later, I try to turn a similar request into a real job for an AI agent. It proposes several steps, asks to inspect more than one source and says it can create the finished files. I do not know whether the connection means it has permission, whether one approval covers the whole plan or what I would need to check if it says the work is complete. I either hover over approve, try to control every sentence or go back to ordinary chat.

By the afternoon, I stop the run before broadening access. I write down the exact outcome, trusted sources, allowed output paths, forbidden actions and questions the agent must bring back to me. I ask for a plan without action and compare it with that boundary. This feels slower for a moment, but I can now see what I am deciding.

At the end of the day, I want more than a plausible result and a reassuring message. I want one bounded task I can preview, steer, check against its sources and recover from if it goes wrong, with a record that shows what I approved and what remains uncertain.