The agentic AI discovery phase upstream of procurement is not a vendor-evaluation sprint to a go-decision; it is an organisational-readiness test where the deciding question is whether the procuring enterprise can clear four upstream tests (definitional clarity across the senior team, a named operational candidate workflow with measured baseline and named owner, threat-model literacy on the cross-agent and browser-resident classes, and workforce-readiness against the BCG access gap) before any vendor conversation. Gartner's January 2025 poll of 3,412 executives (19% significant, 42% conservative, 31% wait-and-see, 8% no investment) describes the phase distribution; the 39% in 'wait-and-see' or 'no investment' postures are not failing discovery but correctly identifying that the upstream tests are not yet cleared.

Claim created at publish; review on 60-day cadence. Anchor sources: McKinsey 'Seizing the agentic AI advantage' research ($2.7T paradox; 80% gen AI use without bottom-line impact); Gartner June 2025 prediction (40%+ agentic AI cancellation by end-2027); Gartner January 2025 executive poll (n=3,412; 19/42/31/8 distribution; agent-washing warning); IBM's Maryam Ashoori on agent autonomous-action definition; Vanderbilt's Jules White via Coursera Agentic AI for Leaders; Dialpad CSuite Report (91% data-quality gap, 6% workforce preparation). Sister claims: AM-030 (McKinsey 23% scaling cohort and four operational preconditions), AM-010 (five operational characteristics named-success deployments share), AM-140 (procurement-committee six pre-pilot questions), AM-007 (vendor-response split), AM-009 (browser-resident agent disclosure read), AM-006 (Atlanta Fed wage premium / BCG access gap). The four upstream tests in this claim map onto and feed forward to the AM-030 four operational preconditions and the AM-140 procurement six. Trigger conditions to revisit before next cadence: (a) subsequent Gartner or analogous executive-poll wave compressing the 19/42/31/8 distribution materially; (b) new analyst framework or academic publication explicitly proposing a discovery-phase methodology that supersedes the four upstream tests; (c) regulatory action (EU AI Act post-market monitoring, sectoral regulator) imposing a discovery-phase due-diligence requirement that reshapes the variable set.