Agent Runbooks for Small Business Teams

Small businesses do not need abstract AI strategy as much as they need repeatable work completed safely. A Rocky runbook describes the job, the inputs, the tools, the checks, and the escalation path.

Official Hermes Agent docs: https://hermes-agent.nousresearch.com/docs

Runbook template

• Goal: the business outcome in one sentence.
• Inputs: links, files, accounts, and context Rocky may use.
• Allowed tools: terminal, browser, web research, document editing, deployment, or messaging.
• Boundaries: what must stay private and what may become public.
• Approval gates: payments, credentials, customer messages, destructive commands, and deploys.
• Verification: the proof that the work succeeded.
• Escalation: what Rocky should do when evidence is missing or risk is too high.

Good first workflows

• Weekly public website QA.
• Lead-intake triage and draft follow-up.
• Local service research packets.
• Content publishing checklists.
• Inventory of public pages, forms, and broken links.
• Document cleanup and export.

Pitfalls

• Asking for a fully autonomous workflow before the manual version is understood.
• Mixing owner-only data into public pages.
• Allowing the agent to send customer messages without a review gate.
• Skipping screenshots for visual tasks.
• Forgetting that some SaaS actions require the account owner, not the agent.

Verification steps

• Run the runbook once on a low-risk example.
• Confirm every output has a receipt: URL, file path, screenshot, or status.
• Remove unnecessary permissions after the first pass.
• Convert successful repeated work into a skill or internal operating note.