28/09/2026
Most agent programmes grant autonomy at design time and never revisit it.
A ladder does the opposite: an agent starts in a sandbox and is promoted, by named people, on a stated date.
Tier 0 · Sandbox — synthetic data, no external calls
Tier 1 · Supervised — real data, human executes every action
Tier 2 · Bounded — acts within scope and budget, irreversible actions gated
Tier 3 · Autonomous — within one defined domain, rarely granted
Underneath all four sits one rule: an agent may never hold more authority than the human who owns it.
Full article: https://www.bluedataconsulting.co/blog/agent-control-plane-fix-the-org-chart-before-the-platform/