Formally once a year, informally every few weeks, and immediately whenever an agent changes. A yearly renewal keeps a reviewer's certificate honest. Calibration every four to six weeks keeps judgement aligned. And any new capability, step up in depth or incident should trigger a short update before the changed agent reaches that person's queue.
Why do agent skills fade faster than other training?
Because the thing people were trained on keeps moving. An agent's certificate lapses after 90 days and is renewed on fresh cases; its sources change; the business narrows or widens its limits; it gains a capability. A reviewer trained on last quarter's agent is partly trained for this quarter's, even if nothing about the reviewer changed.
There is a second reason. The most important decisions are the rarest. A reviewer might see a held payment to a newly changed bank account once a month and a genuine red line once a quarter. Skills used that rarely decay without practice, and they decay silently, because the reviewer keeps approving routine drafts correctly in the meantime.
What sensible rhythm should you set?
| Trigger | What the refresh looks like | Who takes it |
|---|---|---|
| Every 4 to 6 weeks | A calibration session: reviewers decide the same small set of held cases separately, then compare | Everyone who approves held actions |
| Every 90 days | A short look at what changed when the agent's certificate was renewed: new sources, bounds, refusals | Reviewers and team leads on that agent |
| Every 12 months | Formal renewal of the reviewer's certificate | Every certified reviewer and builder |
| Agent gains depth or a capability | A targeted update before the change goes live | People whose queue changes |
| After an incident or a missed red line | A walkthrough of the decision record and the lesson | The team involved, then everyone |
| Role change or long absence | Re-check against current agents before approval rights return | The individual |
The 90-day line ties people to the agent's own cycle. The questions on how often AI agents should be recertified and how often an AI agent should be retested explain why agents run on that cadence; your people should follow it at least loosely.
What should a refresh actually cover?
Not the whole course again. A good refresh covers four things:
- What changed in the agent. New sources, new limits, any capability that moved from depth 2 to depth 3, any new refusal.
- The decisions people got wrong. Overturned approvals and disagreements from calibration are the best material you have.
- Rare red lines. Replay one or two cases people seldom see, so the pattern stays familiar.
- The record. Ask each reviewer to reconstruct one decision from the agent's filed verdicts. If they cannot, they will struggle when an auditor asks.
An example: a KYC refresh team
Take a hypothetical bank whose agent drafts periodic KYC reviews for analysts to approve. In month one the agent reads registry data and drafts a risk rating at depth 2. In month four a new source is added, a signed beneficial ownership record from a verified issuer, and the agent starts closing low-risk reviews within the bank's limits at depth 3.
The analysts' refresh is not annual here. Before the depth 3 change, they spend an hour on what the new source proves and does not prove, and on which cases the agent will still hold for them. The detail of who decides what is set out in KYC refresh with an agent: what stays with a person, and the KYC refresh checklist for agent-assisted reviews becomes the calibration material.
How do you stop renewals slipping?
Make them visible and make them matter. Put each person's certificate expiry next to the agent's in one register, and review both at the same team meeting. A business can adopt the practice of tying approval rights to a current certificate, depth by depth, so a lapsed reviewer drops off the approval queue the day the certificate lapses rather than at the next audit. For operations teams with high turnover, the training plan template for payments operations staff shows how to stagger expiries.
Where the Academy fits
Pryme Intelligence Academy makes the yearly line concrete: Certified Pryme Operator and Builder are valid for 12 months, Architect for 24, and Operator renewal is an update module and a short quiz. The Foundations badge does not expire but is stamped with the product version, so you can see what each person learned on.
Questions people ask
Is a yearly refresher enough on its own?
No. A yearly renewal proves someone was competent on the day of the quiz. Calibration and change-driven updates keep them competent between renewals, which is when the decisions happen.
Do people who only use Foundations need refreshing?
Their badge does not expire, but it shows the product version they learned on. When the product changes materially, a short update for people who work next to agents is worth the hour.
Who should own the refresh calendar?
The team lead for the content, learning and development for the scheduling. The guide to training teams for AI agents sets out how those roles divide.