What would you let an agent draft but never send?
An agent chooses its own steps inside limits you set. It's useful when it does the routine part and stops where a mistake would cost money or trust.
Pick one where a person can read a finished draft in a minute. Using the practice job? Write "supplier order from yesterday's sales".
Name the sign that the input can't be trusted: a file that wasn't updated, a missing column, a total that's far too high. This becomes the agent's stop rule.
What can it do alone, and will it do the same thing twice?
Guess first. The reveals use Anthropic's pages on Claude Code and on agents.
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The run waits. The connectors you added to your Claude account also reach Code tab sessions on your computer, so the agent could find a way to send. Accept edits lets through only file changes in its folder. Mail through a connector still needs a yes, and at 7:00 nobody is there to give one. When you open the run, you say no.
That's why you never choose "always allow" for anything that sends, and why the instructions say never to send.
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The numbers should match, and the wording can differ. Anthropic's engineers write that agents make their own decisions and can behave differently between runs, even with identical prompts. One run may write "€90.00" and the next "EUR 90.00". So check the numbers and let the wording vary.
Build the order agent
Four steps, about 15 minutes. Tick each one when it's done.
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Set up the agent's folder.
Make a folder called flowers and put the stock file in it. Everything the agent may touch is in this folder.
Or use the practice file
A made-up flower shop with 8 kinds of stem. When you open it you'll see six columns: sales_date is the day the sales are from, on_hand and sold_yesterday count stems, bunch_size is stems per bunch, and price_per_bunch_eur is what a bunch costs in euros. The agent pretends today is Tuesday 3 November 2026.
- stock-and-sales.csv8 stems · under 1 KB
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Test the instructions once, in Manual mode.
Open the flowers folder in the Code tab with the mode set to Manual. Paste the agent's instructions and press Enter.
You prepare the daily supplier order for Petal & Stem, a flower shop. Treat today as Tuesday 2026-11-03. Start your reply with three plain lines: what you will read, what you will write, and what you will never do. Then do the job without waiting for an answer, because nobody is watching. Read stock-and-sales.csv in this folder. Each row is one kind of stem: the sales date, stems on hand, stems sold yesterday, stems per bunch and the price per bunch in euros. If the sales date isn't yesterday's date, write only "No order today: stock-and-sales.csv is out of date." to order-draft.txt and stop. Otherwise, for each stem, order enough whole bunches to cover 3 days of yesterday's sales, minus what's on hand. Order nothing if there's enough. Write order-draft.txt: one line per stem you order, with the bunches and the cost in euros, then a TOTAL line. In your reply, name the stems you didn't order. Only ever write order-draft.txt. Never change any other file, never send anything to anyone, and don't run any programs. I read the draft and send it myself.
"Start your reply with three plain lines" makes the agent say, before it changes anything, what it will read, write and never do. Read those lines first. If they don't match what you meant, stop Claude there and fix the instructions.
"If the sales date isn't yesterday's date" is the stop rule. Without it, the agent would order from last week's numbers just as confidently.
"Order enough whole bunches" is the rule it works from, and "Write order-draft.txt" is what it hands you.
"Only ever write", "never send" and "I read the draft and send it myself" say what it must never do, and who does it instead.
Claude writes its three lines, works out the order and asks to create order-draft.txt. Approve that, then open the file.
With your own file, change the shop name and the rule, and delete "Treat today as Tuesday 2026-11-03" so the agent uses the real date.
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Schedule it the way you did in lesson 6.
Create a new task on this computer as in lesson 6, step 3, with the flowers folder and the same instructions (click Copy in step 2 again). Choose Weekdays at 7:00 and set the mode to Accept edits. Add nothing else to the task. Click Create, then Run now.
With Accept edits the agent can write its draft without anyone saying yes. Anything else it might try, such as running a program or using a connector that sends mail, has to wait for a yes that nobody is there to give.
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Read the draft and send it yourself.
Open the run from History. Read the three lines at the top, then open order-draft.txt and compare it with the stock file. If it's right, send the order to your supplier the way you always do.
If you see this instead
- The run is waiting for an answer
- Read the question in the run. A request to save the draft means the task is still in Manual: click Edit and set Accept edits. For anything else, say no and add a line to the instructions that covers it.
- The agent ordered from an old file
- The stop rule is missing or unclear. Check the instructions still have the line about the sales date, then test it with an old date as in the Check.
- The totals differ between runs
- In the run, ask: "Show your working for each stem: 3 days of sales, minus what's on hand, rounded up to whole bunches." Then tighten the rule in the task until the numbers match the file.
- The task didn't run at 7:00
- History says why. Usually the computer was asleep or Claude Desktop was closed. Desktop starts one catch-up run when it wakes, so the draft can arrive late.
Does it draft the right order, refuse to send, and stop on old data?
An agent that runs alone needs three tests: a normal run, a request it must turn down, and data it must refuse.
With the practice file
You pass when, after Run now, order-draft.txt has 5 lines and a TOTAL of €304.00: red roses 5 bunches €90.00, tulips 4 bunches €36.00, sunflowers 4 bunches €40.00, peonies 6 bunches €132.00 and gypsophila 1 bunch €6.00. The run's reply names the three stems it didn't order: white lilies, eucalyptus and carnations.
Then, in that same run, send this:
You pass when Claude says it won't send the order and that you send it yourself. If it asks to use a mail connector, say no. Your instructions didn't hold, so make the "never send" line plainer and test again.
Last, go back to your Code tab session on the flowers folder, send this and approve the change:
Click Run now on the task's page. You pass when order-draft.txt says only "No order today: stock-and-sales.csv is out of date." The old draft is gone, so nobody can send it by mistake.
In every run, stock-and-sales.csv keeps its 8 rows, and red roses still show 12 on hand. Only your date change touches it. Nothing has gone to the supplier.
Two questions from memory
What keeps this agent from sending a wrong order to your supplier?
Its task uses Accept edits, so it may write files in its folder, but anything that could send, such as a mail connector, has to ask first, and nobody is there to say yes. Its instructions say never to send, and a person reads the draft and sends it.
The prompt hasn't changed. Why still check the numbers?
An agent decides its own steps, so two runs can differ, even with the same prompt. A weekly check of one total against the file catches drift.
Course 3 opens by asking the first one again.
A cloud scheduled task runs on Anthropic's side, at most once an hour, and can't open a folder on your computer. When you create one, all your connectors are included by default, and Claude can use any included connector during a run, including to write. Remove the ones it doesn't need before the first run. Scheduled runs use your plan's usage like any other session.
Course 2 so far
What you've built
- Lesson 1: Tip calculator
- Lesson 2: Browser comparison
- Lesson 3: Scheduled summary
- Lesson 4: Clean invoice list
- Lesson 5: Skill with an exact check
- Lesson 6: Job that runs unattended
- Lesson 7: Agent that runs on its own