---
name: agent-escalation-ladder
description: Define what gets escalated, to whom, and how fast, so problems reach a decision maker at the right moment rather than too early or too late. Use when issues either sit unresolved or interrupt the wrong people constantly.
---

# Agent escalation ladder

Without a ladder, escalation is set by temperament: the anxious escalate
everything and the confident escalate nothing until it is a crisis. A
written ladder replaces both with a rule, which is the only thing that
works when many agents run unattended.

## Method

1. **Define the triggers, not the feelings.** Time elapsed, threshold
   crossed, decision required, or risk above a level. Each trigger names
   the next rung explicitly.
2. **Escalate with a recommendation, never a raw problem.** What
   happened, what was tried, the options, and what you would do. An
   escalation that only reports is delegation of thinking upward.
3. **Set the speed by consequence.** A customer-affecting failure moves
   immediately; a stalled internal task waits for the weekly cycle.
   Treating both as urgent destroys the signal.
4. **Escalate one rung at a time.** Skipping levels except in genuine
   emergency prevents the person above from being the queue for
   everything.
5. **Make anything binding stop at a human.** Money, contracts,
   customer communication, and legal exposure are always the top rung,
   whatever the size (see agent-company-blueprint).
6. **Record what was escalated and how it resolved.** Repeated
   escalations of the same kind indicate a missing rule or a missing
   capability rather than bad luck.
7. **De-escalate explicitly too.** An issue that turned out minor should
   be closed loudly enough that everyone stops watching it.

## Boundaries

The ladder routes decisions; it does not make them, and the top of every
ladder is a human. It cannot judge severity beyond the criteria written
into it, so novel situations will be misrouted and need human review.
Incidents involving safety, legal exposure, or personal data have
mandatory paths that override any internal ladder (see
agent-crisis-comms).