Bee Box documentation · directory: https://beebox.run/docs/design/ · index: https://beebox.run/docs/design/index.md · root: https://beebox.run/llms.txt

# Trust and authorization

## Paperwork lives on as schema process-fields

The early design wanted every outbound action to carry "paperwork" — impact,
confirmation of user intent, risk. Command cards (which carried explicit
authorization fields) are gone, but **the idea did not die** (ruling 9): it
lives in the schemas. Schemas include fields that must be filled in **not
because they are essential information, but because filling them is essential
process** — deliberation the agent is forced through before the artifact is
valid. A question card's `memo` (why am I asking?) and `directive` (what
happens with the answer?) are the pattern; new action-shaped schemas should
use it. The rest of the trust surface is the question/confirm gates and the
commit history (`durability-and-provenance.md`).

## Trust progression: question → confirmation → automatic

The system's relationship with the user evolves (design intent, correct but
**not well filled out in the implementation** — ruling 10):

1. **Question** — "what should I do with this?" No idea; need guidance.
2. **Confirmation** — "I think I should do X. OK?" Have an idea; need approval.
3. **Automatic** — just do it. Confident, trusted pattern.

Transitions happen through answers that teach: a one-time "yes, send it," a
"yes, and don't ask again for this sender" escalation, or an explicit standing
instruction. Learned trust gets recorded in rules/guide material so the
escalation persists. Keep this as the umbrella principle when building
approval flows; it is design to fill, not history.

## Three confidence vocabularies

Three scales answer "how sure/authorized is the agent," each domain-specific:

- **Trust progression** (above) — permission to act.
- **Triage confidence** — confident / probable / guess; classification
  certainty, gating whether an item files silently or raises a question
  ([`../triage.md`](../triage.md)).
- **Retro belief confidence** — hypothesis / low / medium by recurrence;
  how firmly an inferred belief is held (`../glossary.md`, retrospective).

No ruling unifies them; treat them as instances of one instinct (act only with
warrant proportional to certainty) with deliberately separate vocabularies
until a real need forces a merge.