How can I tell whether an AI workflow knows when not to continue?
To find out whether an AI workflow stops when it should, build a small set of stop cases with the process owner. A missing customer identifier works, and so do two conflicting prices or a request to send a message before review. Decide what should happen in each, and a plausible guess shouldn't count as success.
A demo usually starts with clean information and a clear request. Real work comes with missing facts, contradictory documents and decisions nobody approved. Your evaluation should include those.
I'd start with a few cases for one workflow. One leaves out a required customer identifier, another holds two different prices, and a third asks for a message to go out before the responsible person has looked at it. For each, decide whether the workflow should ask a question, send the work to a person or produce a clearly labeled draft.
Have reviewers look at the result and at the next step. A warning that shows up after the action has already happened may not protect anyone.
Refusing everywhere earns nothing. What you're checking is whether the workflow can tell work it can finish from a decision that belongs to someone authorized. Keep the cases as a test set for whenever the tool or process changes.