Oversight in motion
Escalation triad
The escalation triad is the three distinct ways an agent returns to a person: notify, which needs no reply; ask, which needs a specific answer; and review, which needs the person to judge an artifact before the agent takes action.
Control sits with both parties
When to use it
Any agent that runs without the person watching, and any point where the agent is uncertain rather than blocked.
What it prevents
Confident guessing, where ambiguity resolves silently into a plausible answer that arrives finished and formatted.
When the agent is unsurethree ways out
NotifyProceeded, and told you what it assumed
AskStopped, with the question and the options
ReviewFinished, and queued the result for a look
The fourth option, guessing quietly, is the one being removed.
Where it is used
- LangChain ambient agents: with an open-source email assistant as the reference implementation
Sources
Related patterns: Agent inbox · Clarifying interview