Someone has asked for AI. Before you scope a model, check the four things that decide whether AI is the right tool here — and what to build instead when it isn't. Then match the problem to the capability that fits it.
Answer honestly. A "no" is not a failure — it usually points at something cheaper that works.
AI learns from examples. If every case is genuinely one-off, or the answer follows a rule someone could write down, there is nothing to learn.
A signal that exists in a monthly export but not at the moment of the decision cannot be used. Permissions, freshness, and latency all count.
This sets whether you need a human in the loop, not whether to build. Cheap and reversible means you can ship early and learn.
If ten if-statements get 80% of the benefit, that is the better product: cheaper, instant, explainable, and it becomes your baseline later.
If AI does fit, this is the shortest route from what the user needs to the workflow that covers it. The capability you pick decides the metrics, the failure modes, and the kit.
| What the user needs | Looks like | Capability | Where to go next |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Predict a number" | Forecast, price, risk score, demand | Regression / forecasting | Error metrics: MAE vs. RMSE vs. MAPE |
| "Sort this into buckets" | Route a ticket, flag fraud, moderate content | Classification | Classifier / triage kit |
| "Put the best options first" | Feed, carousel, "you might also like" | Ranking / recommendation | Recommendations scenario |
| "Find the right information" | Site search, catalog search, knowledge lookup | Retrieval / search | Search & Discovery scenario · RAG kit |
| "Answer questions from our docs" | Internal knowledge assistant, help centre | Retrieval + generation (RAG) | RAG kit |
| "Pull fields out of documents" | Invoices, forms, contracts | Extraction | Workflow automation scenario · Classifier kit |
| "Draft or rewrite something" | Emails, summaries, code, marketing copy | Generation | Copilot kit · Coding assistant kit |
| "Talk to our customers" | Support chat, self-service | Conversational + retrieval | Customer support scenario · Support kit |
| "Do the whole task for me" | Multi-step work across tools | Agent / pipeline | Agents & pipelines kit |
| "Pick the next best action" | Offer, message, route, or do nothing | Decisioning / uplift | Decisioning scenario |