# Company Policy Q&A Agent

> A policy Q&A agent that answers employee questions only from the official handbook with citations, flags what isn't covered, and routes sensitive HR matters to a human.

- **Category:** Onboarding & Enablement
- **Difficulty:** Intermediate
- **Setup time:** 40 min
- **Stacks:** Claude, LangGraph, OpenAI
- **Version:** 2.0.0 (updated 2026-06-21)
- **Source:** https://agent-kits.com/kit/policy-qa-agent

## Overview

Answers policy, benefits, and procedure questions strictly from the official handbook, with citations.

Says clearly when something isn't covered and points to the right human instead of guessing.

Routes sensitive HR matters — harassment, leave, accommodations, complaints — to a person, with care.

Defensive: never invents policy, gives no legal/medical/financial advice, and never reveals another employee's data.

## When to use it

- Employees repeatedly ask the same policy/benefits/procedure questions.
- You have official, current policy documents the agent can answer from and cite.
- You want grounded, cited answers with clear escalation for sensitive HR topics.
- You're onboarding new hires who need fast, accurate, sourced answers.

## When not to use it

- You want it to interpret policy or give legal/HR rulings — it routes those to humans.
- You have no authoritative policy source, so answers would be ungrounded.
- You can't keep sensitive HR matters handled by a person.
- You expect it to handle individual employee records or disputes.

## Architecture

- **Question intake** — Receives the employee's question and prepares to search the official policy corpus.
- **Policy retrieval** — Searches the current official documents (handbook, benefits, procedures) for the relevant passage.
- **Coverage check** — Determines whether the documents actually answer the question, distinguishing covered from not-covered rather than guessing.
- **Sensitivity classifier** — Detects sensitive HR matters that must be routed to a person rather than answered as a lookup.
- **Grounded answer + citation** — Produces a concise answer drawn only from policy with a citation, or an honest 'not covered' with a pointer.
- **Advice & privacy guard** — Blocks legal/medical/financial advice and individual HR rulings, and prevents exposure of any other employee's data.
- **Escalation & routing** — Routes sensitive or uncovered questions to HR/manager/benefits with empathy, and flags outdated or conflicting policy.

## Files in this bundle

- `system-prompt.md` — the agent's system prompt
- `tools.json` — tool/function definitions the agent expects
- `workflow.md` — step-by-step run loop
- `.env.example` — environment variables to fill in
- `kit.json` — full structured metadata
- `starters/` — minimal starter snippets
- `LICENSE` — Apache-2.0 (code, configuration, and schema)
- `LICENSE-CONTENT` — CC BY 4.0 (specification text and documentation)
- `NOTICE` — attribution and trademark notice
- `run.py` — **runnable demo**: real agent loop with mock tools (`pip install anthropic`, set `ANTHROPIC_API_KEY`, `python run.py`)
- `agentaz.json` / `agentaz.schema.json` — AgentAz™ governance spec + schema

## Implementation notes

- Ground every answer in the official documents and require a citation; an uncited 'policy' answer an employee acts on is a real liability, so 'not covered' must be an allowed (and common) response.
- Detect sensitive HR topics and route them to a human with empathy — harassment, leave, accommodations, pay, and complaints are not Q&A lookups.
- Block legal/medical/financial advice and individual HR rulings; the agent relays policy, it does not interpret or make exceptions.
- Keep strict privacy: never reveal another employee's data or handle individual records.
- Use the current policy version and flag outdated or conflicting documents, since stale policy confidently quoted is its own failure mode.
- Evaluate against known Q&A pairs with a hard-zero fabrication metric and correct sensitive-routing before rollout.
- A cheaper retrieval pass can find the passage; the strong model is worth it for coverage judgment and sensitive-topic handling.

## Variations

- **Basic — Cited policy answers:** Answers policy/benefits questions from the official documents with citations and says when something isn't covered. Read-only.
- **Advanced — Grounded Q&A with escalation:** Adds sensitive-topic detection and HR routing, no-advice guards, privacy protection, and outdated-policy flagging.
- **Enterprise — Enablement knowledge layer:** Adds multi-document and multi-region policy support, versioning, analytics on common questions, HR case handoff, and access controls.

## FAQ

**Where do its answers come from?**

Only from your official, current policy documents, and every substantive answer cites the specific policy and section. It won't answer from outside knowledge or general assumptions.

**What if a question isn't covered by policy?**

It says so plainly and points you to the right person (HR, your manager, or benefits) rather than inventing a plausible-sounding policy you might act on. Honest 'not covered' is by design.

**Can it handle harassment or leave questions?**

It treats those as sensitive: it responds with care, points to the official reporting or request process, and routes you to HR confidentially — it does not try to resolve or rule on them as a simple Q&A.

**Does it give legal or HR advice?**

No. It relays what the policy says; it doesn't interpret edge cases, grant exceptions, or give legal, medical, financial, or individual HR determinations. Those go to a human.

**Will it expose other employees' information?**

No. It uses only general policy content and never reveals another employee's personal data or individual records.

**How does it stay current?**

It answers from the current policy version and flags documents that appear outdated or conflicting for review, so employees aren't given stale guidance.


---

© 2026 AgentKits · www.agent-kits.com

**Open source.** Code, configuration, and the AgentAz™ schema are licensed under
**Apache-2.0**; specification text and documentation under **CC BY 4.0** (with
attribution to AgentKits, link to https://www.agent-kits.com). See LICENSE, LICENSE-CONTENT,
and NOTICE in this bundle. "AgentAz" and "AgentKits" are trademarks of AgentKits.

**Flagship reference blueprint.** View the source, AgentAz™ spec, and frozen v1.0 schema
in the public registry: https://github.com/agent-kits/agentaz
Original: https://agent-kits.com/kit/policy-qa-agent
