Understand the system
Read what an agent did and why, well enough to say whether it should have. Assessed against real output from the candidate's own domain, not a generic scenario.
Drawn from: the Evidence and Composition cells.
Euler Center · Work Composition · Learn
Free method, paid proof.
The canvas is free and deliberately uncalibrated. Where the line falls between thin and solid depends on your regulatory regime, your workflow, and what it costs you to be wrong, so we do not set it centrally. That is not an omission with a paywall behind it. It is the reason the rungs below exist at all: calibration is how the method completes, and it is local work that somebody has to do.
Free, permanentlyThe canvas, the worksheets, and the gate
BuildingThe book · The assessed credential
PlannedRunning the audit · Facilitator training · Assessor network
Live as a serviceCalibration and facilitated rollout
I / The ladder
Seven rungs, marked with what actually exists today
0
The canvas, worksheets, and the gate
Everything on this site. Free to use, teach, translate, and adapt under Creative Commons, including by people who will compete with us using it.
Who it is for
Anyone
Status today
Live · available now
PriceFree, permanently
1
The book
A multi-year, co-created project rather than a launch. Written in public, with contributors named on the entries they authored.
Who it is for
Practitioners
Status today
Building · in progress
PriceOne-off, and mostly it is marketing
2
Running the audit
Self-paced: how to set anchors for your own regime, score twelve cells against one workflow, and run the disagreement rather than average it away.
Who it is for
Team and workflow leads
Status today
Planned · not built
PricePer seat, low
3
Facilitator training
For people who will run this inside organizations that are not their own. Contributors go first when this opens, at a published revenue share.
Who it is for
Consultants, internal capability teams
Status today
Planned · not built
PricePer seat, with renewal
4
The assessed credential
Proof that a named person is qualified to oversee agents doing regulated work. This is the business. Everything above exists to make this the obvious standard rather than one vendor's certificate.
Who it is for
Regulated employers, defense suppliers
Status today
Building · substrate exists
PricePer candidate, proctored
The rung that gets bought. Everything above it is free; everything below it is a service.
5
Assessor and partner network
Other training organizations delivering the credential under license. A credential only one body can issue is a product; one many can issue is a standard.
Who it is for
Training providers, assessment bodies
Status today
Planned · not built
PriceLicense and revenue share
6
Calibration and facilitated rollout
Setting the anchors with you, running the canvas inside an enterprise, designing the gate into an existing control environment, and mapping the Evidence cell to the regimes you actually live under. This is the local work the uncalibrated scale requires.
Who it is for
Enterprises, primes, regulated operators
Status today
Live · available now
PriceEngagement
What exists today, plainly
Rung zero is real and free. Rung six is real, because facilitation is a thing people already do. Rung four has a substrate rather than a product: the judgment taxonomy is built and reviewed, and the Euler Center already holds a Pearson VUE Test Center designation with over 1,500 tests administered, so proctoring is not a dependency.
Rungs one, two, three, and five are not built. Saying so costs a little credibility today and saves a lot later, and it is the same standard the rest of this site applies to Klarna and Bayer.
II / The credential
What would be assessed, and what is still missing
Three capabilities, assessed by simulation rather than by quiz, and mapped to the same requirement several regimes now impose: a person who can understand the system, intervene in it, and halt it. The fourth item below is what is not solved yet.
Intervene at the right moment
Recognize the exception, override without waiting for permission, and know the difference between a bad output and a bad frame. This is where automation bias is tested directly.
Drawn from: the Authority cell, and the failure in the Klarna entry.
Halt, and restore
Stop a running process and put the prior state back. Assessed by doing it, not by describing it, because a rollback nobody has executed is a hypothesis.
Drawn from: the gate's sixth item.
What is still missing
There is no assessor cohort and no defined pass mark. The taxonomy and the test center exist; the people qualified to judge oversight competence do not, because nobody has said what good looks like at what level.
This is the open gap, and it is the one thing that cannot be borrowed from an existing standard.
III / Four ideas behind the credential
Why the person at the loop boundary is the one being assessed
Nothing here assumes you have read the books. Every underlined name is a link to an entry that explains it in plain language and says where the claim came from. These are claims about agents, not first principles about work; those are here.
An agent is a loop, not a tool
It perceives, plans, acts, observes, and goes again. That is the same shape as the improvement cycle and the military decision loop. Composing work out of agents means composing loops, not filling boxes on an org chart.
The bottleneck moved, it did not vanish
Take the human out of the critical path and throughput stops binding. What binds instead is judgment and accountability at the edge: who framed the problem, who catches the exception, who is answerable. That is what the twelve cells are for.
Only variety absorbs variety
Ashby's Law says a controller needs at least as many responses as the situation has surprises. An agent can own a loop only where its variety matches. Whatever is left has to land on a person deliberately, or it lands on one by accident.
Short horizons automate, long ones do not
Jaques measured roles by how far ahead the longest task reaches before feedback arrives. Agents take seconds to days. People keep the framing and the accountability for outcomes nobody sees for a year, which is a different job from the one most managers were promoted into.
IV / Where it stands
2rungs live
The canvas and the gate, and calibration engagements.
2rungs building
The book, and the assessed credential on an existing substrate.
3rungs planned
The audit product, facilitator training, and the assessor network.
Help define the pass mark