Integrating agentic AI with legacy enterprise systems requires a disciplined engineering approach rather than direct access. The core pattern is wrapping legacy APIs, screens, and workflows behind narrow, auditable, agent-safe tools that represent business capabilities rather than low-level operations. Key practices include normalizing legacy responses, validating inputs server-side, separating read-only from state-changing tools, requiring human approval for high-risk actions, and logging everything. Agents are also valuable for system discovery and documentation generation, but findings must be validated by engineers and subject matter experts. Screen-based automation (RPA) is a last resort and should be hidden behind controlled tool abstractions. The recommended modernization path is incremental: wrap existing capabilities, observe agent usage patterns, then prioritize what to replace or refactor.
