Chapter 7. The Authority Envelope
In this section
- Chapter 7. The Authority EnvelopeHow to write an AI Worker's Authority Envelope: what it may observe, recommend, draft or execute, the thresholds, what is never automated and when it escalates, how to choose each rung, how to set each product's permissions so the worker cannot do more, how to break the risk of untrusted input plus the power to act outward, and why a company never takes a worker's word for anything, on Claude or on ChatGPT.
- 7.1 The envelope, the brief and the permissionsThe three things that limit what a worker does: the standing decision its owner writes, the narrower limit of one task, and the product settings that make both real.
- 7.2 The autonomy ladderThe four levels of authority a worker can have for each action, the line that matters most, and how a worker stops and asks a person at any level.
- 7.3 Choose the rung: reversibility, familiarity, exposureThree questions that set how far a worker may go with each action, how to combine their answers, and when the level may rise or must fall.
- 7.4 Permissions set the blast radiusWhy product settings decide the worst case, three rules that keep what a worker can do inside what it may do, and what to do when no setting fits.
- 7.5 Prefer connectors to browsers, and browsers to screen controlThree ways a worker can reach a system, how they differ in reach, record and control, and which to choose.
- 7.6 Untrusted input plus the power to act outwardThe one combination that lets a stranger's text turn into an action, and three ways to break it for each task, with two workers from other jobs.
- 7.7 DSoR and the clerk analogyWhat a company gives a new accounts clerk, what the same safeguards look like for an AI Worker, and who provides them in Part II.
- 7.8 The same envelope on today's toolsHow Anthropic's and OpenAI's own pages, and three open-source tools, let you set the same limits, the differences that change your setup, and what stays the same.
- Lab 7: may, then canChapter 7's lab: the AP Worker's Authority Envelope, decided action by action, its settings made no wider than it, each line tested on this morning's inbox and checked against its own key, and the whole contract proved in a fresh chat.
- Check yourselfRecall and practice for the whole chapter: the flashcards, and a final quiz round from all eight concepts.