Skip to main content

​
The Core Idea

Cloud agents are powerful, but the real skill is governance: knowing what should be manual, assisted, or automated.
If you want the taxonomy first, including more information on trigger types + governance levels, check out the Cloud Agents Taxonomy guide.

​
The Cloud Agent Trust Ladder

Most teams should spend the most time in Assisted mode. That’s where trust compounds.

​
Stage 1: Manual Tasks (Human-Triggered)

Goal: Learn the pattern and define review criteria. What you do
  • Dispatch a task
  • Review the output carefully
  • Capture what “good” looks like
Exit criteria
  • You can describe expected output in plain language
  • Failures are understandable (not mysterious)
  • The work is clearly recurring
⸻

​
Stage 2: Assisted Runs (Auto-run, Human Approval)

Goal: Reduce handling cost without increasing risk. What changes
  • The agent runs based on a trigger (schedule/event)
  • A human reviews outcomes before merge/action
Best practices
  • Require PRs/diffs as outputs
  • Use checklists for review
  • Keep blast radius small (one repo, one class of issues)
⸻

​
Stage 3: Scheduled Automation

Goal: Prevent backlog by handling predictable work on a cadence. Best fits
  • dependency hygiene
  • weekly security remediation
  • routine cleanup
Guardrails
  • bounded scope
  • predictable triggers
  • clear rollback path
⸻

​
Stage 4: Event-Driven Automation

Goal: Respond quickly to high-signal events. Best fits
  • high-severity security findings
  • production regressions with clear patterns
  • incident triage summaries
Guardrails
  • tight scope
  • rapid feedback loops
  • human review of outcomes

​
Common Cloud Agent Failure Modes (and Fixes)

Fix: Start manual. Write explicit acceptance criteria. Move to assisted only after you can review quickly.
Fix: Restrict to one repo, one class of issues, one trigger.
Fix: Assign ownership before automation. Automation without ownership creates invisible work.
Fix: Prefer PRs, diffs, and reports over “actions taken silently.”