Course lesson · Lesson 8

Bounded Autonomy and Least-Privilege Action

Grant the least authority that still gets the work done, with hard boundaries and human checkpoints around consequential action.

What you'll take away

Grant the minimum authority a task requires, then gate consequential actions behind explicit approval.
Classify every agent action as free, confirm-required, or prohibited — with evidence and a recovery path for each.
Treat MCP-style tool access as a permission architecture, not a convenience layer.
Anticipate how low-risk actions can combine into high-risk chains, and set autonomy at the task level, not the system level.

This lesson is part of the full course

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