Autonomy tiers

Mandates say what an agent may do. Its tier says how much of that it may do alone. A tier can only turn an allow into a question; it never turns a question or a refusal into an allow.

#The four tiers

The money lines are held in pounds and converted for other currencies at a reference rate; a currency with no reference rate is checked by a person at every tier below principal. Records above the “alone” figure are asked about; above the “at most” figure they are refused (volume_hard_limit).

New agents start at the workspace’s starting tier, intern unless an owner chose junior on the record (with colleagues in the workspace, a second owner confirms). A service token registering agents can never ask for more.

#Earning the next rung

Promotion is one step at a time, and only when the evidence is there:

An agent refused more than 10% of the time since its last change of tier is not ready: an agent that is refused often is probing, or doing the wrong job. The console shows exactly what is missing (“12 more clean decisions; sign-off from security”).

#Separation of duties

• Nobody promotes an agent that acts for them.
• Whoever signed off a promotion does not also make it.
• Auditors check sign-offs; they do not give them.
• A sign-off is for the promotion in front of it, and lapses after 30 days.

#Break-glass

An owner can promote without the evidence, with a reason of at least a sentence. With anyone else in the workspace it is a proposal a different owner confirms within seven days, and no agent is overridden twice in a week. It is still one rung: break-glass is for a rung, not the ladder.

#Losing it

Demotion needs no evidence and takes effect at once. It also happens without anyone choosing it:

• an access profile not recertified by its due date demotes the agent to intern and freezes it;
• a review verdict of incident freezes the agent under an incident hold.

#Standing

Every agent carries its standing: the sponsor who answers for it, its purpose in a sentence, the kill owner who may stop it, and when its assignment ends (at most 366 days, then someone renews it). The people named must be members of the workspace.

curl -X PATCH "https://immiscible.fly.dev/api/w/$IMMISCIBLE_WORKSPACE/agents/agt_4f2c91a7/standing" \
  -H "cookie: __Host-sid=$IMMISCIBLE_SESSION" -H "x-immiscible-csrf: 1" \
  -H "content-type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "sponsor": "cfo@acme.example", "purpose": "Pays approved supplier invoices", "killOwner": "secops@acme.example", "assignmentEndsAt": "2027-01-31T00:00:00Z" }'

Every change of standing and tier is a record in the evidence ledger: who sponsored the agent, who signed off its promotion and on what evidence, who demoted it and why. A promotion is a decision about risk, so it leaves the same kind of evidence a payment does.

#API