Free artifact · CC-BY

    The Ship Gate Kit

    A printable one-pager and a copy-paste PRD block for Agent Autonomy Tiers, The Tool Contract, and The Context Contract. Take it into your next review.

    T3DELEGATEDT2SUPERVISEDT1SUGGESTIONT0RETRIEVALCEILING ≤DECLARED TIERLOWEST AUTONOMY AT THE BASE · EACH RUNG IS A NEW SHIP
    The tool contract cannot outrank the tier.

    Product Leading · CC-BY

    The Ship Gate

    Declare the tier. Contract the tools. Contract the context. Name who can stop it.

    Four tiers

    T0 Retrieval
    — Fetches and summarizes. Does not recommend. Does not change state.
    T1 Suggestion
    — Recommends. A human must accept before anything happens.
    T2 Supervised action
    — Acts only after a human approves this specific action.
    T3 Delegated action
    — Acts within a documented boundary. Executive sponsor + kill switch. A governance event, not a product update.

    Ship gate

    1. 1. Autonomy tier (circle one): T0 T1 T2 T3
    2. 2. Eval spec for that tier (owner: ______)
    3. 3. Escalation rule (what returns to a human)
    4. 4. Rollback owner + time-to-rollback
    5. 5. Re-attestation trigger (tools / prompts / context / model change)

    Tool contract

    Tool or connectorAllowed verbsData classCeiling ≤ tierOwnerKill path
          
          
          

    No tool without a row. A new tool is a new ship.

    Context contract

    Source / corpusFreshness SLAIsolation (tenant/case/user)Cite?OwnerQuarantine path
          
          
          

    No source without a row. A new corpus or memory policy is a new ship.

    productleading.com/kit · Free to copy. Attribution: Product Leading.

    Copy-paste

    The PRD block

    Paste this into any PRD, RFC, or launch doc. It encodes the tier declaration, the tool contract, the context contract, and the eval spec as a ship gate.

    ## Ship Gate

**Capability:** 
**Autonomy tier (circle one):** T0 Retrieval · T1 Suggestion · T2 Supervised action · T3 Delegated action
**Declared by:**              **Date:** 
**Rollback owner:**           **Time-to-rollback:** 
**Executive sponsor (T3 required):** 

No agent, model, or AI feature ships without a declared tier, an eval spec for that tier, and a named owner of rollback. Transitions are launches, not tweaks.

Declare the tier. Contract the tools. Contract the context. Name who can stop it.

### Tool Contract
Every tool, connector, MCP server, or computer-use action this capability may invoke.

| Tool / connector | Allowed verbs | Data class | Ceiling | Owner | Kill path |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  |  |

Rules: no tool without a row. Ceiling must be ≤ declared tier. A new tool, scope, or model that can call it is a new ship, not a hotfix. Default is deny.

### Context Contract
Every source, corpus, memory store, and retrieval path this capability may see, remember, or cite.

| Source / corpus | Freshness SLA | Isolation (tenant/case/user) | Cite? | Owner | Quarantine path |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
|  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  |  |
|  |  |  |  |  |  |

Rules: default is deny. Freshness SLA must be numeric. Citation is required for consequential answers. Isolation boundary must be declared. A new source, embedding refresh, or memory policy is a new ship, not a hotfix.

### Eval spec (this tier)
- Success cases:
- Safety cases:
- Adversarial cases:
- Regression cases:
- Pass threshold:
- Eval owner / review cadence:

### Re-attestation
Re-attest if tools, prompts, context, data access, or model change.
**Next review date:** 

—
CC-BY Product Leading · https://www.productleading.com/kit

    Free to copy and use in your PRDs. Attribution: Product Leading, productleading.com/kit. CC-BY 4.0.