Compliance and oversight are often treated as late-stage problems. The fastest way to stall an AI agent project is to wait until after deployment to think about legal review, brand tone, or risk management.
If those concerns aren’t addressed early, we guarantee that they’ll surface later as blockers; usually pretty serious ones.
Every company has its own standards for safety, privacy, and brand control. The best agent projects make those standards part of the build process from day one. Compliance in the context of AI agents means more than data privacy or legal disclaimers.
It includes the way your agent speaks, what topics it avoids, how it handles sensitive inputs, and when it hands a conversation over to a human.
Start by answering a few key questions:
- How should the agent talk about your products or competitors?
- Are there words or phrases that should never appear in conversation?
- Who has the authority to review and update the agent’s personality or messaging?
- What types of information should never be processed or stored?
- At what point should a human step in to review or continue the interaction?
These aren’t technical questions. They’re policy questions that directly affect trust, brand safety, and user experience. The best teams handle them upfront, while the agent is still being designed.
At Terminal Roast, Taryn brings in Vanessa, the lawyer who handles the café’s legal matters.
They walk through a few simple but important policies.
First, the agent should never make claims about coffee quality or competitor products that could be interpreted as misleading.
Second, it should maintain a consistent, friendly tone — polite, factual, and professional.
Third, if a conversation becomes complex, like a customer complaint about allergies or a potential refund, the agent has to hand the conversation off to a human.
Taryn also decides to enable a “speak to a person” option within the chat interface. This ensures users can always bypass the agent when needed, so both her legal and customer experience teams are happy. (another quick tip: make sure the agent vendor you’re using has a human handoff option, like Botpress!)
By establishing these rules before launch, Terminal Roast avoids the risk of legal review or public missteps after deployment. Compliance often sounds like a burden, but in practice, it builds confidence.
Legal and brand teams want predictability. When you bring them in early and give them visibility into how the agent works, they stop being gatekeepers and become collaborators.
A single documented policy on tone, behavior, and escalation can be applied across multiple agents without having to re-negotiate each time.
Here are the key elements to include in your compliance plan:
- Tone and personality guidelines. Write them down and treat them as binding.
- Escalation logic. Define exactly when and how the agent transfers a conversation to a human.
- Data handling rules. Make sure sensitive information is never logged or stored unnecessarily.
- Review cadence. Schedule regular audits of both conversations and configurations.
Terminal Roast’s small investment in compliance pays off quickly. Their customers trust the agent because it behaves consistently and clearly communicates when a human will take over. Their lawyer is satisfied because the system has built-in safeguards and documentation.
Compliance isn’t red tape. It’s how serious teams protect their reputation while moving fast.
Action: Identify who in your organization is responsible for legal or brand review. Schedule a short meeting before development begins to align on tone, risk thresholds, and handoff rules. Document the outcomes and include them in your agent’s configuration plan.
