AI throughput means nothing if agents violate policy, pricing rules or customer trust along the way. The Gist Agentic drift is a financial leak. When autonomous systems deviate from business logic, the result is systemic brand damage and "silent churn" that erodes the bottom line. Guardrails are the prerequisite for scale. Constraint-first architecture provides the structural integrity required to scale AI safely, leading to higher agentic ROI. Traditional KPIs fail to measure agentic alignment. Success in the agentic era requires a new measurement stack focused on policy adherence and intent matching to ensure AI remains a revenue asset rather than a liability. As enterprise investment in agentic AI transitions from experimental budgets to core operational spend, the metric of success is shifting. In 2026, the primary challenge for leaders is no longer the raw capability of autonomous agents, but their consistency.…