The Monday Morning AI Agent Audit: 5 Things to Check Before Your Week Starts

Every Monday morning, before you let your agents run unsupervised for another week, run this 5-point audit. It takes 10 minutes. It prevents a lot of Sunday-night firefighting. 1. Check your outbox.json If your agent uses an outbox pattern, this file is your canary. A non-empty outbox at the start of the week means something failed last week and didn't get handled. Fix that before adding new tasks. // Bad sign: { "pending" : [ "send_report_2026-03-06" , "update_pricing_page" ] } // Good sign: { "pending" : [] } 2. Review your last 20 log entries Don't read every log. Read the last 20. You're looking for: Repeated retries on the same action [UNVERIFIED] flags that never got resolved Any decision where the agent wrote "uncertain" and kept going anyway These patterns compound. Catch them Monday, not Friday. 3. Audit your escalation rules Your SOUL.md should have explicit escalation rules. If it doesn't, add them now: If uncertain after 2 retries, stop and write context to outbox.json. If