Autonomy Ladder

Common rungs of this ladder: at the lowest level, the agent only **proposes**, and every action needs explicit approval. At the next level, the agent **prepares** the action and a human approves. Then the agent **acts independently** inside a defined scope and a human reviews. And at the highest level (which in practice is rare and used only for low-risk, high-frequency actions) the agent acts independently and only reports.

The main point is that climbing the ladder is **earned, not granted**. The basis is recorded performance: proposal acceptance rate, match between predicted and actual effect, and error rate.