{
  "title": "SXF Agent Opportunity Atlas",
  "version": "1.0",
  "published": "2026-10-22",
  "scope": "50 editorial design scenarios; not real deployments, measured ROI, or benchmark results",
  "methodology": "/guides/ai-agent-use-cases/research-methodology.md",
  "cases": [
    {
      "id": "SXF-01",
      "category": "Customer Support",
      "title": "Route incoming support tickets",
      "description": "Classify intent, severity and required team from an incoming ticket.",
      "pattern": "workflow",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Correct route rate",
      "guardrail": "Review ambiguous or security-sensitive tickets",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-02",
      "category": "Customer Support",
      "title": "Draft contextual customer replies",
      "description": "Retrieve order and policy context before preparing a suggested reply.",
      "pattern": "assist",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Human-approved answer rate",
      "guardrail": "Agent cannot promise refunds without approval",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-03",
      "category": "Customer Support",
      "title": "Investigate multi-system escalations",
      "description": "Search ticket history, incident status and logs to propose next steps.",
      "pattern": "agent",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Resolved with verified evidence",
      "guardrail": "Read-only tools first; escalation needs human owner",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-04",
      "category": "Customer Support",
      "title": "Summarize customer conversations",
      "description": "Create a cited handoff summary from long chat histories.",
      "pattern": "assist",
      "risk": "low",
      "kpi": "Reviewer correction minutes",
      "guardrail": "Redact personal data and verify commitments",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-05",
      "category": "Customer Support",
      "title": "Process refund requests",
      "description": "Prepare eligibility checks and a proposed refund for human sign-off.",
      "pattern": "human",
      "risk": "high",
      "kpi": "Escalation accuracy",
      "guardrail": "Never disburse funds without explicit authorization",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-06",
      "category": "Sales",
      "title": "Research prospective business accounts",
      "description": "Combine permitted public sources into sourced prospect briefs.",
      "pattern": "agent",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Cited verified facts per brief",
      "guardrail": "No scraping of prohibited data or unsupported claims",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-07",
      "category": "Sales",
      "title": "Qualify inbound leads",
      "description": "Validate required fields and score based on documented rules.",
      "pattern": "workflow",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Qualification precision",
      "guardrail": "Audit bias and provide manual override",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-08",
      "category": "Sales",
      "title": "Personalize sales outreach drafts",
      "description": "Draft account-specific email copy from approved factual signals.",
      "pattern": "assist",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Accepted drafts per hour",
      "guardrail": "Human sends; respect contact and privacy laws",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-09",
      "category": "Sales",
      "title": "Update CRM after meetings",
      "description": "Extract follow-ups and propose CRM updates from meeting notes.",
      "pattern": "workflow",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Correct CRM fields",
      "guardrail": "Confirm before writing records",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-10",
      "category": "Sales",
      "title": "Negotiate contract price",
      "description": "Prepare counteroffer options within policy for human negotiation.",
      "pattern": "human",
      "risk": "high",
      "kpi": "Terms approved without exceptions",
      "guardrail": "Human negotiator authorizes binding terms",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-11",
      "category": "Marketing",
      "title": "Repurpose webinar to campaign snippets",
      "description": "Extract time-coded highlights and draft channel-specific posts.",
      "pattern": "workflow",
      "risk": "low",
      "kpi": "Approved clips per hour",
      "guardrail": "Verify quotations and media rights",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-12",
      "category": "Marketing",
      "title": "Plan multi-channel launch assets",
      "description": "Search a brand knowledge base and schedule draft asset work.",
      "pattern": "agent",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "On-brand approval rate",
      "guardrail": "No automatic campaign publication",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-13",
      "category": "Marketing",
      "title": "Analyze campaign performance anomalies",
      "description": "Investigate metrics across dashboards and propose hypotheses.",
      "pattern": "agent",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Verified root-cause findings",
      "guardrail": "Never change ad spend without approval",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-14",
      "category": "Marketing",
      "title": "Generate product description variants",
      "description": "Draft variants grounded in the approved product catalog.",
      "pattern": "assist",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Correct approved descriptions",
      "guardrail": "Fact-check claims and restricted terms",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-15",
      "category": "Marketing",
      "title": "Approve regulated promotional claims",
      "description": "Gather legal/medical claim evidence for specialist sign-off.",
      "pattern": "human",
      "risk": "high",
      "kpi": "Unsupported claim rate",
      "guardrail": "Qualified human approves all final claims",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-16",
      "category": "Software Engineering",
      "title": "Triage bug reports against source code",
      "description": "Search code and issue history to propose likely root causes.",
      "pattern": "agent",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Verified bug reproduction rate",
      "guardrail": "Read-only investigation first",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-17",
      "category": "Software Engineering",
      "title": "Generate test cases from requirements",
      "description": "Propose boundary and regression tests from versioned specs.",
      "pattern": "assist",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Passing meaningful tests",
      "guardrail": "Developer verifies expected behavior",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-18",
      "category": "Software Engineering",
      "title": "Open draft pull requests",
      "description": "Propose scoped code edits and run tests in an isolated branch.",
      "pattern": "agent",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Reviewed PR acceptance rate",
      "guardrail": "Require tests and human merge",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-19",
      "category": "Software Engineering",
      "title": "Update dependencies automatically",
      "description": "Apply pinned upgrade rules and run deterministic CI tests.",
      "pattern": "workflow",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Successful nonbreaking upgrades",
      "guardrail": "Review supply-chain issues and major releases",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-20",
      "category": "Software Engineering",
      "title": "Deploy changes to production",
      "description": "Evaluate release gates and prepare deployment plan.",
      "pattern": "human",
      "risk": "high",
      "kpi": "Rollback and incident rate",
      "guardrail": "Human or documented release policy authorizes production",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-21",
      "category": "IT & Security",
      "title": "Summarize incident alerts",
      "description": "Group related telemetry into analyst-friendly incident briefs.",
      "pattern": "workflow",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Actionable alert precision",
      "guardrail": "Maintain evidence trail; analyst owns disposition",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-22",
      "category": "IT & Security",
      "title": "Investigate access anomalies",
      "description": "Read identity signals and logs to propose account-risk triage.",
      "pattern": "agent",
      "risk": "high",
      "kpi": "Validated incident findings",
      "guardrail": "Least privilege and security-team control",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-23",
      "category": "IT & Security",
      "title": "Reset compromised credentials",
      "description": "Verify identity, prepare remediation and request approval.",
      "pattern": "human",
      "risk": "high",
      "kpi": "Unauthorized reset count",
      "guardrail": "Identity controls must be deterministic",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-24",
      "category": "IT & Security",
      "title": "Find outdated internal documentation",
      "description": "Search and flag stale runbooks using timestamps and context.",
      "pattern": "agent",
      "risk": "low",
      "kpi": "Confirmed stale pages",
      "guardrail": "Editors review changes",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-25",
      "category": "IT & Security",
      "title": "Classify service-desk requests",
      "description": "Apply routing rules to common password, device and access questions.",
      "pattern": "workflow",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Correct category and handoff",
      "guardrail": "Privilege changes need separate approval",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-26",
      "category": "Finance",
      "title": "Extract invoice fields",
      "description": "Parse invoice totals and match line items against purchase orders.",
      "pattern": "workflow",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Field accuracy / exception rate",
      "guardrail": "Deterministic reconciliation before posting",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-27",
      "category": "Finance",
      "title": "Explain budget variances",
      "description": "Gather ledger and forecast evidence for analyst review.",
      "pattern": "agent",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Reconciled explanations",
      "guardrail": "No unapproved ledger edits",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-28",
      "category": "Finance",
      "title": "Forecast cash-flow scenarios",
      "description": "Construct bounded what-if scenarios from approved assumptions.",
      "pattern": "assist",
      "risk": "high",
      "kpi": "Forecast error and assumption traceability",
      "guardrail": "Finance owner approves forecast",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-29",
      "category": "Finance",
      "title": "Monitor suspicious reimbursement claims",
      "description": "Screen policy mismatches and assemble auditor evidence.",
      "pattern": "workflow",
      "risk": "high",
      "kpi": "Human-confirmed exceptions",
      "guardrail": "No automatic accusation or disciplinary action",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-30",
      "category": "Finance",
      "title": "Release vendor payments",
      "description": "Prepare a verified payment packet from approved invoices.",
      "pattern": "human",
      "risk": "high",
      "kpi": "Incorrect or unauthorized payments",
      "guardrail": "Dual authorization for actual transfers",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-31",
      "category": "Operations",
      "title": "Route purchase orders to vendors",
      "description": "Check stock, terms and approvals and prepare vendor orders.",
      "pattern": "workflow",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Order exceptions per 100",
      "guardrail": "Respect spending limits and human approval",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-32",
      "category": "Operations",
      "title": "Investigate shipment disruptions",
      "description": "Query tracking and supplier feeds to suggest recovery options.",
      "pattern": "agent",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Verified delay resolution time",
      "guardrail": "Operator confirms rerouting",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-33",
      "category": "Operations",
      "title": "Maintain inventory reorder suggestions",
      "description": "Combine demand signals and stock policy to propose quantities.",
      "pattern": "workflow",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Stockout and excess inventory",
      "guardrail": "Purchases remain approved actions",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-34",
      "category": "Operations",
      "title": "Write shift handover summaries",
      "description": "Convert structured logs and free-form notes into checklists.",
      "pattern": "assist",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Handover omission rate",
      "guardrail": "Shift lead checks critical changes",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-35",
      "category": "Operations",
      "title": "Control physical equipment",
      "description": "Provide diagnostics and advisory recommendations only.",
      "pattern": "human",
      "risk": "high",
      "kpi": "Safety-critical incident count",
      "guardrail": "Safety-rated deterministic controls remain primary",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-36",
      "category": "Human Resources",
      "title": "Draft job descriptions",
      "description": "Produce inclusive role drafts from approved competency requirements.",
      "pattern": "assist",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Approved description quality",
      "guardrail": "Check local employment policy",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-37",
      "category": "Human Resources",
      "title": "Answer employee policy questions",
      "description": "Retrieve handbook clauses and cite current approved policy.",
      "pattern": "agent",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Policy citation accuracy",
      "guardrail": "Escalate ambiguous legal/personal cases",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-38",
      "category": "Human Resources",
      "title": "Schedule onboarding steps",
      "description": "Trigger fixed access, orientation and training checklist tasks.",
      "pattern": "workflow",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "On-time onboarding completion",
      "guardrail": "Access controlled by IT",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-39",
      "category": "Human Resources",
      "title": "Rank candidates for hiring",
      "description": "Organize job requirements and evidence for human assessors.",
      "pattern": "human",
      "risk": "high",
      "kpi": "Fairness and documented review",
      "guardrail": "Do not delegate consequential hiring decisions",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-40",
      "category": "Human Resources",
      "title": "Summarize training feedback",
      "description": "Aggregate anonymized themes from permissioned responses.",
      "pattern": "assist",
      "risk": "low",
      "kpi": "Human-reviewed theme fidelity",
      "guardrail": "Protect employee privacy",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-41",
      "category": "Legal & Compliance",
      "title": "Find contract renewal obligations",
      "description": "Search agreements for dates, notices and relevant clauses.",
      "pattern": "agent",
      "risk": "high",
      "kpi": "Human-verified obligation recall",
      "guardrail": "Lawyer reviews interpretation",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-42",
      "category": "Legal & Compliance",
      "title": "Prepare regulatory change briefs",
      "description": "Monitor authoritative sources and compare policy text.",
      "pattern": "agent",
      "risk": "high",
      "kpi": "Citation completeness and freshness",
      "guardrail": "Counsel validates applicability",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-43",
      "category": "Legal & Compliance",
      "title": "Draft a first-pass NDA summary",
      "description": "Extract key differences against approved templates.",
      "pattern": "assist",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Clause omission rate",
      "guardrail": "No autonomous legal sign-off",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-44",
      "category": "Legal & Compliance",
      "title": "Validate vendor due-diligence packets",
      "description": "Apply required evidence checklist and request missing documents.",
      "pattern": "workflow",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Evidence completeness",
      "guardrail": "Compliance owner makes acceptance decision",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-45",
      "category": "Legal & Compliance",
      "title": "Issue binding legal advice",
      "description": "Assemble research and candidate analyses for counsel.",
      "pattern": "human",
      "risk": "high",
      "kpi": "Reviewer-confirmed analysis",
      "guardrail": "Licensed professional makes final judgement",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-46",
      "category": "Research & Analytics",
      "title": "Review literature across sources",
      "description": "Search paper metadata and assemble a citation-grounded synthesis.",
      "pattern": "agent",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Verified citations and coverage",
      "guardrail": "Check evidence strength and retractions",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-47",
      "category": "Research & Analytics",
      "title": "Clean recurring data imports",
      "description": "Apply schema rules, deduplication and logged transformations.",
      "pattern": "workflow",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Data validity and lost-row rate",
      "guardrail": "Keep raw copies and rollback",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-48",
      "category": "Research & Analytics",
      "title": "Build exploratory chart narratives",
      "description": "Explain chart trends using approved numeric datasets.",
      "pattern": "assist",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Verified facts per chart",
      "guardrail": "Never invent data or causal claims",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-49",
      "category": "Research & Analytics",
      "title": "Investigate sudden KPI shifts",
      "description": "Select tools dynamically to triangulate possible causes.",
      "pattern": "agent",
      "risk": "medium",
      "kpi": "Confirmed root-cause rate",
      "guardrail": "Analyst reviews causal explanations",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    },
    {
      "id": "SXF-50",
      "category": "Research & Analytics",
      "title": "Approve medical treatment conclusions",
      "description": "Collect relevant references for clinician interpretation.",
      "pattern": "human",
      "risk": "high",
      "kpi": "Safety escalation compliance",
      "guardrail": "Clinician owns treatment decisions",
      "evidence": "SXF editorial candidate—not a documented real-world deployment"
    }
  ]
}