Limits and recovery
Useful autonomy needs a clear edge.
Limits before execution
Section titled “Limits before execution”A task can be bounded by:
- project and objective
- allowed files or systems
- prohibited actions
- time and model capacity
- monetary spend
- number of retries
- required checks
- explicit stop conditions
The safest default is closed: a worker receives only the access needed for the current task.
Reserve capacity
Section titled “Reserve capacity”North Star protects capacity for recovery and human-directed work. Scheduled tasks should not consume the entire available model or spend budget simply because they started first.
Recovery before mutation
Section titled “Recovery before mutation”When a change is material, North Star records the recovery method before applying it. That can be a source commit, image tag, backup, database snapshot, previous deployment, or an exact inverse action.
Rollback is verified
Section titled “Rollback is verified”A rollback instruction is more useful when its target still exists and its identity is recorded. The result should say what can be recovered, how, and which data would not be restored.
Stop honestly
Section titled “Stop honestly”When proof is unavailable, North Star reports a partial result and names the missing evidence. It does not call a deployment finished because a build passed locally.
Next: Privacy boundary