Mandate Scope

The size of what an autonomous business's Encoded Mandate permits and puts at risk, scored 0–6 across Decision Breadth, Reach and Exposure — used as the measure of an autonomous business's size in place of headcount, which no longer distinguishes a small one from a large one.

A traditional business is sized by staff and revenue. An autonomous business runs on roughly one Steward regardless of scale, so headcount stops carrying information. Mandate Scope replaces it. A narrow mandate covers one task class, one market and one jurisdiction, with decisions that are cheap to reverse. A wide mandate covers many task classes and counterparties, crosses jurisdictions, and includes decisions whose Rollback Cost is high.

**Scoring.** Three axes, 0–2 each. Exposure is the aggregate Rollback Cost of the worst plausible quarter at current volume, so volume counts and the score can rise while the mandate stays the same. A rule that fails repeatedly counts once for every transaction it touched in the period. Exposure is scored at the highest level any one kind of loss reaches: financial, regulatory or reputational. Report the three axis scores alongside the total, since the same total can hide different profiles. Provisional bands, to be calibrated against real businesses: 0–2 SME-scale, 3–4 mid-scale, 5–6 enterprise-scale.

| Axis | 0 | 1 | 2 | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Decision Breadth | One or two decision types, all reversible | Several types, some commit resources | Commits spend, signs terms, or resolves disputes | | Reach | One market, one jurisdiction, direct customers | Several counterparty types or markets, one jurisdiction | Crosses jurisdictions or carries a Counterparty Mandate | | Exposure | Worst plausible quarter's aggregate Rollback Cost is absorbable by the owner | Material, but insurable at ordinary terms | Regulatory, irreversible, or uninsurable at ordinary terms |

**Illustration (hypothetical).** A business that schedules and confirms appointments for one trade in one country scores Decision Breadth 0, Reach 0 and Exposure 0 at launch: total 0, SME-scale. If it later takes deposits on customers' behalf, Decision Breadth rises to 1. If its volume grows until a bad quarter of mis-scheduled jobs would cost more than the owner could absorb, Exposure rises to 1. Total 2: still SME-scale, but at the edge, with the second rise caused by volume alone.

**Distinguished from.** Encoded Mandate: the enforced statement itself; Mandate Scope is its breadth and the exposure it generates. Autonomy Spectrum Framework: how autonomous a business is, not how large. Revenue per Steward: an output measure, which can be high at narrow scope.

First used: October 2026

Edition 1 · updated October 2026