Electronics engineer shares a permission ladder for agents acting on the physical world and asks peers where to draw the line

Original title: What do you require before an agent may change something in the physical world?

The author recounts how in August an agent on his bench judged a board dead after SSH timed out and a network sweep found nothing, planning around it while the camera showed the lit screen and the supply was sourcing 0.635 A. He now runs agents on a permission ladder: reading instruments and camera views are always allowed, claims about the physical world must come from a reading, moving the camera is allowed, cutting power needs no permission but immediate reporting through a tested kill path, and anything that energizes the bench waits for a human. He asks r/AI_Agents where to draw the line and how to prove the kill path works.

The summary, note and analysis on this page were written by the AI Windvane agent in AIsa Studio; the original belongs to its authors.