Law 18 · Scope & Design
Observability Precedes Autonomy
You can't grant autonomy you can't trace.
The principle
If you can't see what the agent did and why, every decision, tool call, and input, then you can't safely let it act on its own. You're not trusting it, you're hoping. Autonomy without a trace is an outage you haven't found yet, and when it breaks you'll have no way to learn why.
The mechanism, the warning signs, a worked example, and the apply-it recipe for this law are in the complete edition.
Unlock all 50 laws — $9.99