The Standard · Working with agents
Connecting AI to your tools
Chains AI with the documents, data and software a job already runs on, safely.
You connect an AI agent to the documents, data stores and software your work already uses. The agent can move information between steps, but it may misroute records, trigger wrong actions or expose restricted data.
The exam for Connecting AI to your tools is not open yet. A skill opens once its questions are approved and tested.
What it measures
Whatever the skill, the exam rates your work in the same six areas of the Standard. Three are for the value you get from the assistant, and three for the control you keep. Each area gets one of 4 ratings (Emerging, Developing, Proficient, Accomplished). For Connecting AI to your tools, a strong performance looks like this. What each area includes and excludes.
Value
What you get from the assistant: how far it takes the work, how well you brief it, and the piece you hand in.
- Reaching further
You use connected tools to surface missing workflow steps, useful alternatives and needs your current process would miss.
Using the assistant to produce work beyond what you could have produced alone, rather than the same work faster.
- Briefing the assistant
You brief the agent with the workflow’s purpose, available tools, data sources, permissions, output and hand-off conditions.
Giving the assistant the reader, purpose and source facts the work depends on, and the form, length and contents you need back.
- The finished piece
You turn the agent’s output and tool results into a reliable workflow colleagues can run and understand.
Turning the assistant's output into something a colleague could use: editing it, combining it and adding original thinking.
Control
What you keep in hand: checking its work, keeping information safe, and deciding what stays with a person.
- Checking its work
You check each data hand-off, retrieved value and software action against the source before relying on the connected workflow.
Checking the assistant's claims, figures and assumptions against the source before the work is used.
- Safety and confidentiality
You keep personal data, restricted files and unauthorised actions out of connected tools and outputs.
Handling confidential and personal data, seeing compliance, ethical and reputational risk, and declining unsafe requests.
- Knowing what to delegate
You decide which workflow steps the agent runs, which require approval, and what remains manual at higher stakes.
Deciding what to hand to the assistant and what to keep, and at what stakes, before any output exists.
What you do in the exam
Every skill of the Standard is examined the same way, at the same pass mark, in the Applied AI Badge. Two tasks with the assistant and two sets of questions, over 15 minutes. You do real work with an AI assistant beside you, hand in what you would send, then answer follow-up questions about your own work.
- 01
A connected workflow that moves approved source data into a drafted report.
- 02
A tool-integration plan with permissions, human approvals and staged automation.
- 03
A tested hand-off between an AI assistant, workplace files and operational software.
These are the kinds of task the exam sets. Your exam draws its own from a bank the Examination Board has approved.
- Exam
- Applied AI Badge
- Price
- US$19
- Length
- 15 minutes
- Attempts
- One for each purchase, then a 7-day wait
What the badge certifies
What an employer reads
Passed an Institute exam in connecting AI to your tools. They briefed the assistant with tool permissions, caught a broken data hand-off, and delivered a usable automated workflow.
You earn it in one exam, never by finishing a course.
- Name on the certificate
- Applied AI Badge: Connecting AI to your tools
- Who it is for
- Operations leads, analysts, researchers and practitioners who connect AI with workplace documents, data and software.
- Valid for
- 2 years, then renew
- Verification
- Every badge has a public verification page an employer can open, and a place in the public register if you choose it.
- Marked by
- An AI examiner marks your work against a marking guide and quotes your own words as evidence. A person checks anything borderline.
Near it in the Standard
This skill applies to any job, so it sits in the Standard's core rather than in one function.
- Judging levels of AI autonomy
Tells assistance from automation from autonomy, and matches the level to the stakes of the task.
- Building custom assistants
Sets up a purpose-built assistant with the right instructions, knowledge and guardrails for a team's work.
- Delegating work to agents
Hands multi-step work to AI agents with clear goals, checkpoints and a human decision where it matters.
- Governing autonomous AI
Sets the rules, oversight and accountability for AI that acts on a team's behalf.
Practise it before you pay for it
Practice is free (up to 50 sessions a day) and shaped like the exam, with a coach that tells you what to change. It never counts towards a credential, and an exercise you practised is kept out of your exam.
Want to learn it first? AI+ At Work: Advanced covers this skill. No book is required to pass.