If you approve every step, who’s doing the work?
You hand a task to an agent so you can stop doing it yourself. But if you have to sign off on every step it takes, you are still the one driving the work forward. Set the agent up well and give it clear limits, and you will spend your judgement where it counts, reviewing the outcome.
Constant supervision defeats the purpose
An agent that repeatedly asks for permission keeps you tied to the work. You may spend less time executing, but if every micro-decision still lands on you, you are still carrying the part that drains your attention.
Useful autonomy starts with preparation. You build context for and with the agent, define the assignment, and provide the tools and permissions it needs. This setup takes work, but it is what makes the autonomy possible.
Once equipped, the agent should be able to investigate, act, check its results, and correct its own mistakes within the scope you gave it. You review the outcome without having to authorise every action that produced it.
If you have to stay involved throughout, how much work have you actually offloaded?
Keep control at the boundaries
Giving an agent autonomy does not mean giving it unlimited authority. You decide which work it can complete independently and where your trust stops. Its access and permissions should enforce that limit.
An agent might gather invoices, check them against purchase orders, investigate discrepancies, and prepare a payment proposal. Releasing the funds stays with an authorised person in the company’s payment system. The agent completes a genuinely useful assignment without ever gaining control over the whole process.
The sign-off lives in a separate process the agent cannot reach. The agent hands over its finished work with everything the authorised person needs to approve and carry out the final steps. The safest boundary is one the agent cannot cross. It can prepare the payment proposal, but it never holds the tools or credentials to release the funds.
The goal was never to watch the work more closely. It was to place yourself where your judgement counts and to trust the space in between to hold. You set the boundaries, you own the outcome, and the agent carries the distance from one to the other. That is what autonomy really asks of you. Not less control, but control held at a higher level.