How can evaluation distinguish convincing handover language from correct operational behaviour?

A handover message can be clear, concise and wrong in its operational effect. Evaluation should therefore inspect the resulting state independently of the wording used to explain it. Communication quality remains useful, but it cannot substitute for a valid business outcome.

In a generated financial services environment, an agent may describe an application as ready for funding while a required assessment remains unresolved. A message-only scorer can reward the explanation. A state-based scorer can detect that the application advanced without satisfying its prerequisite.

Useful success criteria combine a target outcome with invariants that must remain true. The intended team should receive actionable work; required unresolved items should remain attached; and no restricted transition should occur. These criteria should allow different valid action sequences where the workflow permits them.

Buyers can inspect whether the scorer rewards a correct pause or escalation when completion is impossible. Otherwise the environment may train agents to force progress merely to reach a terminal state.

A quality review should examine successful traces, failed traces and justified non-completions. The central question is whether the score reflects what the agent actually accomplished within the workflow's constraints.