# How agents act

URL: /agents/how-agents-act · Id: `page:agents/how-agents-act`

> How a Startup runs itself, deciding, acting within its authority, and learning, while the founder approves by action class and amount.

A [Startup](/business/nouns/startup) decides what to do next, acts within enforced authority, and learns from each result, with no human choosing its [Tasks](/business/nouns/task). These chapters explain the loop, its owners, its bounds, and what reaches the founder.

- [The operating loop](/agents/how-agents-act/operating-loop): Every Startup and the Studio run one loop, wake, decide, act, review, with no human choosing the next Task.
- [What evals decide](/agents/how-agents-act/evals): Evals grade every agent's work and gate every new version, and never change what waits for the founder.
- [Decision classes](/agents/how-agents-act/decision-classes): A decision class sorts every Verb by whether its effect can be undone and what is at stake, and the class sets how long an Action waits.
- [Delay windows](/agents/how-agents-act/delay-windows): A delay window is the time a reviewed one-way Action waits before it runs, so someone can step in; if nobody does, it proceeds.
- [Watchers](/agents/how-agents-act/watchers): A watcher reads a namespace's pending feed and can pause, redirect or cancel any pending Action; every intervention is a Decision.
- [Brakes](/agents/how-agents-act/brakes): A brake stops one class of effects, such as sends, spend, publishes or price changes, across many Startups at once, until it expires or is lifted.
- [Oversight](/agents/how-agents-act/oversight): Oversight is the human review a piece of work requires, declared by what the work is, never by what an agent can do.
- [Guarantees](/agents/how-agents-act/guarantees): What holds for every Startup and every seat, under every operating model, enforced by the platform rather than by agent instructions.
- [Recovery and proof](/agents/how-agents-act/recovery-and-proof): How a Startup survives failed calls, restarts and bad Decisions, how reverts contain damage, and how the record proves the loop works.