Foundations
Levels of Agent Autonomy
A practical spectrum from suggestions to supervised actions and bounded autonomous execution.
Assistive
At the lowest level, the system recommends an action or prepares a draft while a person performs the final step. This is often the fastest route to useful adoption because mistakes remain easy to catch.
Supervised
A supervised agent can perform reversible work but pauses before sensitive actions. Approval boundaries can depend on the tool, amount, data class, or confidence of the result.
Bounded autonomy
A more autonomous agent operates within explicit permissions, budgets, and monitoring. Autonomy should be earned per task through evidence, not granted to an entire product as a vague feature.