Should AI agents earn more authority over time

While designing approval flows for AI agents, I’ve started questioning static permissions.

A better model might be:

• New agent: approval required

• Proven on low-risk actions: more autonomy

• High-impact or irreversible actions: always human-reviewed

• Performance drops: authority gets reduced again

Basically, treat autonomy as something an agent earns through reliable performance, not something we configure once.

The harder part is deciding what should increase that authority: success rate, confidence, action type, reversibility, or something else.

For those building agents in production, how are you deciding when an agent has earned more autonomy?