Treat LLMs like junior analysts, not senior engineers

The mental model that gets teams in trouble is "the model is the product". Once you switch to "the model is a junior analyst on the team", most design decisions get easier.

You would not give a junior analyst write-access to your billing system on day one. You would not let them email a customer without a senior review. You would absolutely give them well-scoped, repetitive work with clear acceptance criteria: exactly the kind of work an LLM is good at.

Build the rails first. Worry about the model second.