Automated onboarding without losing oversight
New team members get set up in minutes, not days.
Context
A growing engineering team struggling with inconsistent onboarding processes and access management.
Constraints
Security requirements mandated least-privilege access and documented approval for all system access.
Before
Onboarding required manual coordination across multiple systems, often with missing steps or excessive permissions granted.
After
Agents execute onboarding runbooks, requesting human approval at key checkpoints. Every access grant is logged.
What Agents Do
Execute onboarding checklist, configure development environments, request appropriate access levels, document all changes.
What Humans Do
Approve access requests, review onboarding completion, handle exceptions.
Receipts
$ agent run onboarding:developer --user=new-engineer
✓ created GitHub account invitation
✓ configured local dev environment
✓ added to appropriate Slack channels
✓ created Linear user
✓ requested CI access (pending approval)
✓ generated onboarding summaryThe Challenge
Every new team member meant hours of manual setup work:
- Creating accounts in multiple systems
- Configuring development environments
- Granting appropriate access levels
- Documenting what was set up
The process was inconsistent, and it was difficult to audit who had access to what.
The Solution
We implemented agent-driven onboarding runbooks that execute the standard setup process while maintaining human control over access decisions.
The agent follows a documented checklist, but pauses at security-sensitive steps to request human approval. Every action is logged, creating a complete audit trail of what access was granted and when.
Results
New team members are productive in hours instead of days. The security team has full visibility into access grants, and the onboarding process is consistent every time.
Ready to build something similar?
Let's discuss how we can create inspectable, human-friendly workflows for your team.