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This blueprint shows how to design a Duckie system for payment disputes and chargebacks. It uses generic payment operations terminology so you can adapt it to your own ticketing system, payment processor, CRM, and required approval process. The recommended design uses a deterministic workflow backbone with autonomous agents for the ambiguous parts of the work.

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Start With the MVP

You do not need to launch the full disputes system at once. Start with an autonomous loop that validates cases, classifies the reason, applies decision policy, gathers approved evidence, and routes only policy-required approvals or exceptions to humans. Then add broader submission automation, escalation, reporting, and feedback after the first loop is trusted.
Use the MVP as the starting point if you are building this blueprint for the first time.

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What This System Does

The system helps a team:
  • Receive dispute cases from a ticketing system, webhook, or payment processor
  • Classify the case reason and deadline
  • Gather missing information from the account or merchant
  • Draft an evidence packet from approved data sources
  • Route policy-required approvals or exceptions to humans
  • Submit or record the final response when policy allows
  • Track the outcome
  • Report daily operational status to stakeholders
  • Learn from escalations, failures, and operator corrections
Do not remove required approval gates. For financial or compliance-sensitive processes, automate allowed paths and route only policy-required approvals, high-risk cases, and exceptions to the right human owner.

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Design at a Glance

FunctionDuckie componentWhy
Case intake and triageWorkflow deployment from ticketing or webhookIntake needs repeatable extraction, validation, and routing.
Reason classificationAutonomous classifier agent called by workflowDispute reasons can be messy and require judgment.
Account communicationAutonomous communication agent called by workflowMessages need context, tone, and language handling.
Evidence preparationWorkflow plus evidence drafting agentThe process is deterministic, but drafting needs judgment.
Required approvalsApproval workflow plus Slack escalation agentPolicy-required approvals and exceptions need a structured internal request.
Daily reportingScheduler deployment running a Duckie Assistant reporting agentStakeholders need recurring visibility without a custom cron service.
Feedback loopDuckie Assistant feedback agent and analyticsCorrections should improve guidelines, workflows, categories, and tools.

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Blueprint Pages

MVP

Start with autonomous case handling before adding broader submission and escalation loops.

System Map

See the full multi-agent, multi-channel architecture.

Intake and Triage

Deploy the entry point that validates and routes new cases.

Dispute Handling Workflow

Build the deterministic backbone for the case lifecycle.

Account Communication Agent

Gather missing information from the account or merchant.

Evidence and Approval

Draft evidence packets and route required approvals.

Escalation Agent

Send questions and approvals to an internal Slack channel.

Daily Reporting Agent

Post a scheduled stakeholder digest.

Feedback and Analytics

Turn run data, outcomes, and corrections into improvements.

Rollout Plan

Move from narrow case handling to broader live operations.
  1. Start with the MVP to understand the smallest useful autonomous loop.
  2. Read the system map to see how the MVP expands into the full architecture.
  3. Read intake and triage to understand the entry point.
  4. Read the dispute handling workflow to see how state is controlled.
  5. Open the function page for the first component you want to build.
  6. Use the rollout plan before moving to live traffic.

Designing Agent Systems

Learn the general workflow-plus-agent design pattern.

Replay Testing

Test historical cases before live deployment.