Train, monitor, manage · Lesson 1 of 5
How does the Ladder work, and how does a Worker earn autonomy?
Published September 8, 2026
The Ladder is three trust levels a Worker climbs on one Team: Training, where every step waits for you, Supervised, where reversible work proceeds with a visible stop window, and Autonomous, where you review outcomes. Every Engagement starts at Training, and a person presses the promotion button on the track record.
What are the three rungs?
Training, Supervised, Autonomous, in that order.
At Training, every step waits for you. Proposals, plans, and pull requests all arrive as drafts you answer. At Supervised, reversible work proceeds with a visible stop window, so you watch the record rather than sit in the queue. At Autonomous, you review outcomes instead of steps.
Every Engagement starts at Training the day you create it, whatever that Worker has earned elsewhere.
What does the track record measure?
Plain counts, per Engagement, over time: proposals accepted unedited, plans approved, pull requests merged, reviews acted on. Misses sit on the record beside the wins and are not swept off after a good week.
That record is the whole argument for a promotion, and you can read it before you make one. It is also the only honest way to say a Team is getting better at your judgment: the claim and its evidence live on the same page.
Who presses the promotion button?
A person, always. The record advises. It never moves a rung by itself, and there is no setting that opens autonomy in advance of the work.
Open the Engagement, read what it has done on this Team, and promote it one rung. The promotion is recorded with the record it cited, so anyone can ask later why a Worker was trusted with something.
What lowers a rung?
Two things.
You can lower one yourself, at any time, for any reason. It is the same button in the other direction, and it takes effect on the next run.
And reversing something an Engagement shipped on its own lowers it one rung automatically. A revert is the clearest signal there is that trust ran ahead of the work, so the product acts on it without waiting for you to remember. The drop and the re-earn both stay on the record. When a Worker gets it wrong walks the rest of that runbook.
Why is the Ladder per Engagement, not per Worker?
Because trust is local. Proctor may have earned approval on the web app while the payments repo is still new to it. One rung across the workspace would either hold back the work it knows or push it into work it does not.
Each craft also carries a ceiling. Bailey proposes and never ships, so a Bailey Engagement never reaches Autonomous: a proposal always waits for a person to accept it. Proctor’s approval on a pull request arrives once its Engagement reaches Supervised, and each approval lands in your review queue until it is Autonomous; at Training it reviews, reports, and advises. The Workers lesson lists each craft and the line it does not cross.
What never moves, whatever the rung?
The floor. Merging, deploying, and anything irreversible or externally visible stay gated at every rung, forever. There is no top of the Ladder where a Worker starts shipping to production on its own say-so.
Spend caps, items in flight, and review rounds are set on the Team and inherited by its Engagements, so a promoted Worker still works inside a budget. The audit trail behind all of it is covered in security.
Common questions
Does a Worker promote itself once its numbers look good?
No. The track record advises a raise or a lowering and never moves the rung by itself. Promotion is a button a person presses after reading what the Engagement has actually done, and the promotion cites the record it was granted on.
If I promote a Worker on one Team, does it change on the others?
No. The rung lives on the Engagement, which is one Worker's employment on one Team. The same Proctor can be Autonomous on the web app and Training on the infrastructure repo, because the review norms and the accountable person are different in each place.
What does Autonomous actually let a Worker do?
Act alone on reversible work inside its Engagement, without staging every step for you. It never means unattended. Merges, deploys, and anything irreversible stay gated at every rung, and every act still leaves a receipt on the record.
What happens if I revert something a Worker shipped on its own?
The acting Engagement drops one rung automatically, and the reversal goes on the record. Nothing about that is hidden or forgiven quietly. Climbing back up takes the same evidence the first promotion did.