# Autonomy Slider

> Expose agent autonomy as a continuous adjustable parameter so the same codebase can span scripted assistant to fully autonomous worker without re-a...

- **Category**: Agentic AI
- **Subcategory**: Safety & Control
- **Canonical URL**: https://designpattern.fyi/patterns/autonomy_slider/

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## Description
**Intent**: Expose agent autonomy as a continuous adjustable parameter so the same codebase can span scripted assistant to fully autonomous worker without re-architecting.
**Context**: A product team owns one agent codebase but several deployment contexts: a free tier that should not act unsupervised, a paid tier where the user has opted into automation, an internal beta where engineers want full autonomy to stress-test. Hard-coding the autonomy level per build forks the codebase or branches the prompt.
**Solution**: Define an autonomy parameter (scalar or vector) the runtime consults before each action. At one end the agent only emits suggestions a human acts on; at the other it acts directly and reports. Intermediate values gate by action type, confidence, or user opt-in. Persist the setting per-tenant or per-user. Surface the current value in the UI so users and operators see at a glance how autonomous the agent currently is.


## Use Cases
- One agent codebase needs to serve materially different autonomy contexts.
- Operators need to dial autonomy down quickly without redeploy.
- Users should be able to opt into higher autonomy explicitly.





## Trade-offs


### Advantages

- One codebase serves many autonomy contexts.

- Per-tenant or per-user tuning without redeploy.

- Operators can dial autonomy down quickly in response to incidents.




### Considerations & Drawbacks

- A continuous knob invites micro-tuning that has no clear meaning.

- Multidimensional autonomy is hard to render as a single slider; teams collapse to a slider that loses information.

- Users may not know what setting they are on if the UI hides it.







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**Reference**: [Original Source](https://www.agentpatternscatalog.org/patterns/autonomy-slider/)