The Practice

Anchored Agency is the practice of designing agent behavior before implementation and before runtime.

Category and Method

The Category

Pre-runtime agent behavior design. The work happens before engineering implementation and before the agent runs.

The Discipline

Deliberate specification of what agents are authorized to do, and who bears accountability when things go wrong.

Seven Components of the Specification

Workflow Objective
What the agentic workflow is for. Set up front by the enterprise.
Consequential Decisions
Decisions where the agent influences institutional outcomes. These are intentionally designed before runtime.
Behavioral Directives
How the agent should behave at each decision point. Part of pre-runtime design.
Authority Boundaries
What the agent may do and what it never may do.
Escalation Logic
When and how the agent escalates to a human. Matures with harness.
Refusal Conditions
When the agent must refuse to act.
Agent Accountability Matrix
Defines five roles (Acts, Verifies, Authorizes, Bears Accountability, Audits) and governs which roles agents may hold.

Before Implementation, Before Runtime

The practice operates in the pre-runtime phase, before engineering implementation begins.

Three phases of consequential discipline: Pre-runtime, Runtime, and Post-runtime. Pre-runtime is owned by Anchored Agency. Runtime and Post-runtime are well-attended.
1

Preparation

Flight plan. Fuel calculation. Abnormal-procedure review. Crew briefing.

Owned by Anchored Agency

2

Execution

The flight itself. Execution under uncertainty.

Well Attended

3

Review

Debrief. Where the institution learns.

Well Attended

In agentic AI, the three phases have been collapsed. Anchored Agency restores pre-runtime as a discipline.

Collaborators

The Enterprise

Sets the workflow objective. Approves consequential decisions and authority boundaries. Bears ultimate responsibility for the approval.

Cross-functional Teams

Product, design, engineering, operations, and domain teams collaborate in pre-runtime design. Use the Anchoring Instrument to structure the work.

Engineering

Implements against the approved specification. Does not re-author the specification during or after implementation.

Risk and Legal

Review and advise on boundaries. Do not own the category. The enterprise owns the approval decision.

Read the Full Specification

The foundational paper includes worked examples, detailed methodology, and reasoning.

Read the Paper