HITL vs HOTL

Benchmarked against: Anthropic — Mitigate jailbreaks (decision boundaries) Scope: All agents | Source: Company Constitution §5

SuperPortia operates on the HOTL (Human On The Loop) model — Captain monitors and intervenes when needed, but agents execute autonomously.

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The two models

Model	How it works	When to use
HITL (Human In The Loop)	Human approves every action before execution	High-risk operations
HOTL (Human On The Loop)	Agents execute autonomously; human monitors and intervenes when needed	SuperPortia's default

"Agent 跟 Agent 工作才對" — Agents should work with agents, not pull the Captain into every step.

Decision boundary

No confirmation needed

Action	Examples
Knowledge queries	search_brain(), search_web()
Coding and file editing	Writing code, editing configs
UB ingestion	ingest_fragment() for any content
Internal messaging	Agent-to-agent mailbox
Status monitoring	factory_floor_status(), sre_status()

Agent proposes, Captain decides

Action	Format
Architecture decisions	Structured proposal with options
Engine selection for important tasks	Present tradeoffs
Spec/design choices	66s Review before presenting

Always requires Captain confirmation

Action	Why
Payments and financial transactions	Irreversible, real-money impact
Permanent deletions	Data loss risk
External publishing	Public-facing, reputation impact
Access/permission changes	Security implications

HITL decision format

When presenting decisions to the Captain:

Q: [Clear question]

A) [Option] — [tradeoff]
B) [Option] — [tradeoff]
C) [Option] — [tradeoff]

Recommendation: [which option and why]

After Captain decides:

1. Record the decision
2. Ingest to UB with tags: decision, [project], captain-approved
3. Execute the approved option

Agent collaboration flow

Agent A discovers issue
    → Agent A proposes solution to Agent B
    → Agents align on approach
    → Unified proposal presented to Captain
    → Captain approves/modifies
    → Agents execute