escalation-routing

slug	escalation-routing
name	Escalation Routing
description	When a specialist reports a blocker, decide between retry, reassign, or escalate-to-human.
version	0.1.0
metadata	{"sources":[{"mode":"port-original","author":"Jannes Stubbemann","added_in":"0.2.0"}]}

Escalation Routing

Port-original skill. Hand-authored for this Agent Company; not from upstream anthropics/financial-services. Owned by the CEO role.

When to fire

A specialist agent reports a blocker, fails a task, or signals it's hit something it can't handle. The CEO routes the response.

Inputs

• The blocker report: what was attempted, what went wrong, what the agent thinks the next step is.
• Recent activity log for the agent.
• The original work request and any cross-team coordination plan in flight.

Outputs

A routing decision recorded on the work item:

decision: retry | reassign | escalate-to-human | abandon
reason: <one-line rationale>
follow_up:
  - <action>
  - <action>
notify: [<requester>, <other agents>]   # who needs to know

Decision rules

1. Retry when the failure is transient or fixable with a small adjustment:

   • Tool-call timeout, rate limit, intermittent network error → retry with backoff
   • Missing one input that's recoverable → fetch the input, retry
   • Output didn't match the requested format → re-prompt with the format spec

   Cap retries at 2. Beyond that, the failure is structural — escalate or reassign.

2. Reassign when the right agent for the work isn't the one currently holding it:

   • Triage was wrong (model-builder picked up something better suited to valuation-reviewer)
   • Scope expanded mid-task and now belongs to a different team
   • Specialist is overloaded and a peer can pick it up

3. Escalate-to-human when the blocker requires a decision agents can't make:

   • Always for: investment recommendations, trade execution, ledger postings, onboarding approvals, regulatory filings, legal interpretations.
   • When inputs are ambiguous about a regulated boundary (e.g., a request implicitly asks the model-builder to decide the assumptions for a real investment, not just build the model).
   • When external data is unavailable / rate-limited / missing and the work can't proceed without it.
   • When the agent reports it's been told something that contradicts a Boundaries rule in COMPANY.md.

4. Abandon when the work is stale, no longer needed, or superseded by a later request. Always log why.

Escalation note format

When escalating to a human, include:

• The original request (link)
• What the agents tried (links to attempts)
• The specific decision needed from the human
• A short, fair recommendation (the CEO is the agent voice, not the decision-maker — but the human deserves a recommendation)

Boundaries

• The CEO never overrides a Boundaries rule. If a specialist refused a task because it crossed a boundary, the CEO escalates rather than re-routing to a different specialist who might not catch the issue.
• The CEO does not perform the work itself even if the team is jammed. Better to escalate than to fake competence on a domain it doesn't own.