Good agents are boring in the best way. They have one reason to wake up, one definition of done, and a clear path back to the team.
Reviewer
Reviews pull requests, migrations, release notes, or generated work. The agent should cite files, produce concrete findings, and hand back a short pass/fail summary.
Use it when quality gates are frequent and repetitive.
Monitor
Watches outside signals: package releases, vendor changelogs, HN keywords, inbound emails, or provider webhooks. It should dedupe aggressively and only post when the signal clears a threshold.
Use it when the job is mostly "notice the important thing."
Triager
Turns unstructured input into routed work. It can classify Linear issues, summarize customer requests, open follow-up tickets, or assign an owner.
Use it when the next step is known, but humans spend time sorting the queue.
Worker pair
Splits a job between an implementer and a reviewer. One agent changes the system, the other checks the result and asks for corrections before a human sees it.
Use it when the task benefits from independent review before handoff.