Intervention Dependency (ID)

The fourth axis of the Autonomy Spectrum Framework — the frequency with which a business's core systems require human intervention to continue operating, scored 0–2 and operationally expressed through MTTI and Escalation Rate as the inverse measure of Architectural Certainty.

Intervention Dependency is the fourth axis of the Autonomy Spectrum Framework: the frequency with which a business's core systems require human intervention to continue operating, scored 0–2 and operationally expressed through MTTI and the Escalation Rate. The axis is the inverse measure of Architectural Certainty — where the first three axes score the architecture, ID scores the observed operational result: how long the system actually runs before it needs a person.

An intervention counts toward the axis when the system could not continue correctly without it — an exception above the Intervention Threshold, a halt the architecture itself triggered. A Steward who voluntarily inspects, tunes, or improves a running system has not intervened in the scored sense. The axis is read from two instruments because they catch different failure shapes: MTTI measures the rhythm of dependency over time, and the Escalation Rate measures the proportion of agentic task executions that require a person.

A score of 0 indicates continuous steering: the system requires human input multiple times per day, and the people operating it are functionally part of the execution path regardless of how the architecture is described. A score of 1 indicates scheduled or frequent intervention — the system runs unattended for hours but not days, and intervention is routine rather than exceptional. A score of 2 indicates that MTTI on the core revenue loops exceeds 72 hours and intervention occurs by exception only, at the conditions the Intervention Threshold was designed to surface.

The axis carries one validation requirement that the others do not. A long MTTI is evidence of autonomy only when the Steward is actively engaging with the Audit Surface; the same number produced by a Steward who has stopped watching is Nominal MTTI — a metric that confirms autonomous operation while the system runs unmonitored. ID is therefore always scored as a pair: the intervention frequency, and the proof that someone was in a position to intervene.

First used: June 2026