# Cost-Aware Action Delegation

> Classify every agent action by risk/cost and route each tier to a different approval policy, bounding the autonomy surface per-action instead of by...

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

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## Description
**Intent**: Classify every agent action by risk/cost and route each tier to a different approval policy, bounding the autonomy surface per-action instead of by one global flag.
**Context**: An agent has access to a mixed action surface: reading a file, calling a search API, sending an email, modifying a CRM record, refunding an order, terminating a cloud resource. A single 'auto-approve everything' flag treats sending an email the same as refunding $10,000. A single 'require approval for everything' flag turns the agent into a typing-assist tool.
**Solution**: Tag every action with a risk tier (low / medium / high, or a richer scheme). Map each tier to an approval policy: low → auto-execute, medium → confirm with the user, high → require human reviewer with explicit sign-off. The tier can be conditional on parameters (refund > $1000 → high). The agent's action surface is the union of permitted (tier, policy) pairs; the runtime enforces the policy independently of the agent's reasoning. Make the classifier itself reviewable — actions and their tiers are configuration, not prompt content.


## Use Cases
- The agent's action surface spans actions of materially different blast radius.
- Operators need an audit trail of what risk class each executed action was in.
- Some actions are parameter-conditional and would be misclassified by a single tier per action.





## Trade-offs


### Advantages

- Autonomy decisions are per-action and per-parameter, not one switch.

- Approval fatigue collapses for low-tier actions while high-tier risk gets attention.

- Risk tier is auditable in traces; postmortems can ask why a high-tier action ran without sign-off.




### Considerations & Drawbacks

- Tier assignment is a judgment call; misclassification (high marked as low) is a real attack surface.

- Parameter-conditional tiers add complexity to the classifier and to traces.

- Tier inflation — teams who get burned move actions up; over time the medium tier engulfs everything.







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**Reference**: [Original Source](https://www.agentpatternscatalog.org/patterns/action-risk-tiering/)