Corey JamesFull autonomy is a slogan and so is a human in every loop. I put the human at the one step that carries real authority, putting a generated tool into service, setting a day's spend, approving a client's grant, unlocking a work order, deciding the fate of an uncertain send, and nowhere else. The gate sits at the narrowest point, so agents keep their speed everywhere else and the human's attention is spent where it changes something.
The shape
Identify the action whose consequence cannot be undone or whose authority cannot be delegated. Build the automation to run flat out up to that action and to stop there with everything prepared. Make the human step small and explicit. Keep the gates few, because a human is a throughput limit.
Illustrative proportions.
Where it appears
In FAFO Core and Function Forge, the rebuild script deliberately never restarts anything itself, and the budget path is not on any agent's tool surface: Tools that build tools, under governance.
In the Auth and access plane, the consent screen turned out to be the only control that mattered: The hardening fix that locked everyone out.
In AgentOS, a work order is immutable once applied, and the logins behind every vendor model session are operator-held: Closed by evidence.
In FAFOHive, the agents run real businesses through the gateway and still hold no keys: Agents with real tools and no keys.
What it buys and what it costs
It buys autonomy that an organisation can accept, because the irreversible step has a name on it. It buys agents that are fast, because they are not asking permission for routine work.
It costs latency at the gate and it costs the discipline to keep the gate list short. Every time I have been tempted to add a gate for comfort, I have asked whether the step carries authority or merely risk, and risk is what the rest of the machinery is for.
The judgment in it
The gate is placed by consequence, not by fear.
A generated function is reviewed by machines and gated by a restart. A payment is gated by a person. Both are the right amount of human.