Agent Debt: 7 signs you’re accumulating it

How many AI agents are acting in your name?

Most procurement teams can’t answer that in under an hour. Agents arrive through vendor renewals, pilots and suite upgrades, often with no named owner, no defined access, no cost line and no log. That gap has a name: Agent Debt. It grows whether you built the agents or not.

Fewer than half of CPOs feel confident in their ability to monitor and control agentic AI.

This 5-minute self-check shows you where you stand. Tick the signs that are true today, get your score, and leave with a fix you can start this week.

Try Sign 1 now: Could you list every agent acting in your name, including the ones your vendors switched on, in under an hour?

If you hesitated, there are six more signs to check.

What’s inside the self-check

• 7 signs of Agent Debt across ownership, access, dependencies and cost
• A simple score that shows whether you already have a shadow agent estate
• A ready-to-use fix for every sign, from an agent inventory sheet to a log replay test
• An access scope card to send to every vendor with embedded agents
• A six-line cost meter that puts one number on what your agents cost
• A 30-minute team session you can run on Monday

Find your Agent Debt before it compounds
Five minutes to score yourself. One week to start fixing it. Includes data from The Hackett Group, Ardent Partners and Forrester.