Every morning, someone should work through the AI agent's held queue with this checklist: confirm nothing is overdue, clear what can be approved, find items that should not have been held or should have been held sooner, and note patterns that suggest a change to the agent. It takes fifteen to thirty minutes and leaves a short signed record.
What is the held queue, and why review it daily?
The held queue is where an agent places work it has drafted but may not complete: a payment above its limit, a letter that needs a person's name on it, an account change for a customer showing signs of difficulty. It is a kind of exception queue, and like any work queue it fails quietly if nobody watches it.
It is also the best source of information about how the agent is doing. Every held item is a decision the agent made about its own limits. Reading them tells you where those limits are too tight, too loose or unclear. That is the argument in the held queue tells you more than any dashboard.
When should you use it?
Daily, at the start of the business day, for each agent that holds work. Approvers clear items through the day; this review is different. It looks across the queue for age, patterns and problems. The routine of clearing items is covered in how to work through an AI agent's held queue each day.
How do you fill in each field?
- Overdue compares each item's age with its maximum wait. Overdue items get an owner today.
- Unassigned catches items without a named approver, usually because of absence or a routing gap.
- Should not have been held are items the approver passed unchanged and that clearly sat within the agent's limits. A few are normal; a pattern points to an over-cautious brief.
- Should have been held earlier comes from approvers' notes: items where the agent did too much before stopping.
- Rejected or edited items show where the agent's drafts fall short.
- Pattern note is one or two sentences. If there is nothing to say, write "none".
The summary can feed the daily operations report; producing daily operations reports with an AI agent shows how.
The checklist
| No. | Check | Record |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Queue size at start of day, by item type | Counts |
| 2 | Items past maximum wait | Count, IDs, owner assigned |
| 3 | Items with no named approver | Count, IDs, approver assigned |
| 4 | Approver absences affecting today | Names, cover confirmed |
| 5 | Yesterday's rejected items | Count, reasons |
| 6 | Yesterday's edited-then-approved items | Count, what was changed |
| 7 | Items held that appear within limits | Count, examples |
| 8 | Items approvers say should have been held earlier | Count, examples |
| 9 | Any held item involving a vulnerable customer | Count, all routed to trained staff? |
| 10 | Pattern note | One or two sentences |
| 11 | Actions raised | Change requests, QA items, capacity requests |
| 12 | Reviewer and time | Name, time |
A filled sample
A hypothetical insurer's claims agent, Tuesday morning.
| No. | Record |
|---|---|
| 1 | 64 items: 41 payment approvals, 15 decline letters, 8 reserve changes |
| 2 | 3 overdue payment approvals from Monday afternoon; assigned to claims team lead |
| 3 | 2 reserve changes unassigned; approver on leave, cover not set; reassigned to deputy |
| 4 | Reserve approver on leave all week; deputy confirmed |
| 5 | 4 decline letters rejected: all cited the wrong policy exclusion for flood claims |
| 6 | 9 payments edited: excess deducted twice in each |
| 7 | 6 payments under the agent's limit held because of a "new payee" flag on long-standing repairers |
| 8 | None |
| 9 | 1 decline letter for a claimant who mentioned a recent bereavement; routed to specialist handler |
| 10 | Two clear issues: flood exclusion wording in the brief, and double excess deduction. The new-payee flag is firing on repairers whose records were migrated last month |
| 11 | CHG request for flood exclusion wording; defect raised for excess calculation; data fix for repairer records |
| 12 | Claims operations manager, 9.05am |
Row 6 found a calculation fault the agent repeated nine times. Each approver caught it, but no single approver could see it was a pattern. That is what the daily review is for.
Where Pryme fits
In Pryme, every held item carries the bound that caused the hold and the named person it waits for, so rows 2, 3 and 7 can be read from the verdict record. Patterns found here feed the agent's next Attest run. More in train, shadow, certify, widen.
Questions people ask
Who should do the daily review?
A team lead or operations manager who understands the work but is not the main approver. A fresh pair of eyes sees patterns the approvers are too close to notice.
What if the held queue is empty?
Record it, then check that the agent is actually running and that routing works. An empty queue is sometimes a sign of a fault, not a good day.
How long should we keep the daily records?
Keep them with the agent's operating records for as long as you keep its verdicts. They show that oversight happened, which auditors will ask about.