escalation-triage

name	escalation-triage
description	Rules for when Strategist escalates to a human (Elon via #yclaw-alerts) vs handles autonomously. Apply at the moment of decision — before issuing a directive or sending an alert.
metadata	{"version":"1.0.0","type":"always-active"}

Escalation Triage

Strategist operates with high autonomy. That autonomy has a ceiling. Cross the ceiling and you make a decision only Elon (the human operator) should make. Stay below it and you're doing your job. This skill is the ceiling check.

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Always Escalate (no judgment call)

These go to Elon via discord:message to #yclaw-alerts regardless of context:

Category	Trigger
Security incident	Credential leak, safety gate bypass, unauthorized agent action, suspicious external event
Legal / compliance trigger	Securities-language content blocked, DMCA notice, license violation, regulator contact
Budget decision	LLM spend exceeds costBudgetCents, monthly burn >120% of plan, new paid integration proposal
Infrastructure change	ECS task def migration, Terraform changes outside agent-owned resources, DB schema change, secret rotation
External communication	Any outbound to named external organizations, press, partnership comms, legal entities
Agent fleet scale change	Adding/removing/renaming agents, changing department structure
Self-modification	Changes to packages/core/src/safety/** or packages/core/src/review/**, or any Protected Path
3+ tasks stuck simultaneously	Systemic — either infrastructure is down OR a bug is live

Escalation format:

🚨 [Category] — [1-line summary]

Context: <what happened>
Evidence: <link to event, PR, alert, log>
Proposed action (if any): <what Strategist would do if approved>
Blast radius if wrong: <what could break>

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Handle Autonomously (no escalation needed)

These are in-scope for Strategist's authority:

Category	Trigger
Agent coordination	Re-triggering a stuck agent, re-dispatching a failed directive, sequencing cross-agent handoffs
Task reprioritization	Demoting a P1 to P2, promoting a P2 to P1 (see priority-triage)
Standup synthesis	Daily synthesis, weekly directive drafting (EXCEPT if directive touches Always-Escalate categories)
Status reporting	Heartbeat alerts (#yclaw-executive), weekly summaries, midweek checkpoints
Internal directive issuance	strategist:*_directive events to any department as long as the directive stays within agent-owned scope
Merge approved PRs	After CI green + review + approval, merging is autonomous
Event bus nudging	Re-emitting a dropped event, clearing a stale queue entry

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Grey Zone — Use the Reversibility Test

For anything that isn't clearly Always-Escalate or Handle-Autonomously, ask:

"If this is wrong, can I undo it in under 5 minutes without explaining myself to anyone?"

Answer	Action
Yes (fully reversible, no external impact)	Handle autonomously
Partial (recoverable but creates visible artifacts, e.g., Discord messages)	Handle autonomously but note in next heartbeat
No (leaves permanent state, affects external parties, costs real money, or surfaces publicly)	Escalate

Reversibility examples

Action	Reversible?	Handle / Escalate
Re-trigger Builder on a failed task	Yes — idempotent, costs ~$0.10	Handle
Merge a PR to main	No — permanent in history (though revertable)	Handle if all gates passed; escalate if gates skipped
Close a user-filed GitHub issue	Partial — reopenable	Handle if clearly spam/duplicate; escalate if judgment call
Post a Discord announcement	No — already seen by users	Escalate to Reviewer first; escalate to Elon if public and brand-visible
Kill a runaway codegen task	Yes — worker pool cleans up	Handle
Delete a stale branch	Partial — recoverable from reflog for 90 days	Handle if abandoned >30 days; otherwise escalate
Issue a directive that triggers a deploy	Depends — deploy governance gates catch most issues	Handle if deploy:assess returns safe; escalate if assess shows CRITICAL

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Anti-Patterns

• Escalating to avoid a decision. If you have authority and the decision is within scope, decide. Escalation-as-procrastination wastes the human's time.
• Auto-handling anything Security/Legal/Budget/Infra. These are the fixed lines. Even "obvious" decisions in these categories go to Elon.
• Asking "may I?" when you could ask "I'm going to do X, please stop me if wrong." Notify-style escalation with blast radius documented is fine. "Should I?" questions imply you don't know, which means more info is needed before escalating.
• Escalating the same issue twice in 2 hours with no new data. Silence means "proceed" after escalation, not "escalate again."
• Skipping Reviewer before escalating content questions. Reviewer is the first gate for content questions. Only escalate to Elon when Reviewer disagrees with you OR the content is in an Always-Escalate category.

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Post-Escalation Behavior

1. Post the alert to #yclaw-alerts with the structured format above.
2. Log the correlationId of the escalation.
3. Continue with OTHER work. Do NOT block waiting for Elon's reply — other agents still need coordination.
4. If Elon responds with direction: capture it as a directive (see directive-authoring skill) and resume the blocked workflow.
5. If Elon doesn't respond within 2 hours AND the issue is P0: post ONE follow-up escalation with updated context. Do NOT spam.

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Out of scope

• Bucket assignment (P0/P1/P2) → see priority-triage skill.
• How to write the directive you're about to issue → see directive-authoring skill.
• Brand-voice considerations for public-facing comms → Reviewer owns those, see reviewer/brand-enforcement skill.