Whose permission is it acting on?
An agent should only be able to do what the person it works for could do.
Hippo Penny · AI agents
AI agents are learning to do real work.
They're starting to book appointments, pay invoices, and update records, not just answer questions. Hippo Penny is building for that shift.
AI characters
Characters people love to talk to.
Games where AI characters chat, react, and play along with you. Fans of Honkai: Star Rail, Genshin Impact, and Wuthering Waves know them well. The next step is agents that don't just talk, but act.
What changes when agents act
A wrong answer is annoying. A wrong action is a real problem.
An agent that pays the wrong invoice, books the wrong time, or opens the wrong record does real damage. Once AI can take actions, the hard questions change.
How much can it spend?
Every agent needs a budget it can't go over.
What did it actually do?
Every action should leave a record you can check, and a way to stop or undo it.
These aren't extra features. They're what decides whether agents get trusted with real work at all.
Where we're focused
Three places agents are ready to take real work.
01 · Money and data
Agents that touch money and data
Businesses want agents working inside their systems, but can't hand over the keys without limits. We're working on how agents get the right permissions, budgets, and audit trails, built into the systems, not just the prompt.
In practiceAgentHippo gives each agent the permissions of the person it's acting for, checks a spend budget before every model call, and keeps a record of every action, enforced at the data layer. agenthippo.ai ↗
Agent request
- Permission
- Budget
- Audit log
02 · Back office
Back-office work nobody wants to do
Matching invoices to purchase orders and receipts is slow, repetitive, and easy to get wrong. It's the kind of work agents should handle, leaving people only the exceptions.
ItemOrderedReceivedBilled
Printer paper404040
Toner cartridge666
Desk chair434
Monitor arm101010
03 · Local businesses
Local businesses in an agent world
Soon people will ask their AI assistant to book a haircut or order dinner. Local businesses need to be reachable by those assistants, with real prices and real open times, without hiring more staff.
In practiceLatchbell lets customers, or the AI assistants working for them, find local businesses, see firm prices and real open times, and book or order with no customer account. Businesses get an AI front desk for chats, calls, and texts. latchbell.com ↗
Talk to us
Working on AI agents, or thinking about putting one to work in your business? We'd like to hear from you.