Autonomy levels
How much agents decide on their own, and where you stay in the loop.
Autonomy is a single dial per project. It sets three things at once — whether plans need your approval, whether PRs merge themselves, and whether agents stop to ask when a decision is ambiguous — so you don't have to reason about them separately.
New projects start at Supervised. You can change it at any time, and per project: a mature service and a greenfield prototype don't need the same setting.
The levels
| Supervised | Balanced | Autopilot | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plan approval | Required | — | — |
| Who merges | You | You | Merges on green checks |
| Asks on ambiguity | ✅ | ✅ | — |
Supervised — You approve the plan and you merge. Nothing happens without you. The plan comes to you before any code is written, agents open the PR for you to review, and they ask about high-stakes decisions rather than guessing.
Balanced — Agents plan and build on their own. You still merge. No approval gate, so agents get straight to work, but the PR is still yours to review and merge, and they still ask when something is genuinely ambiguous.
Autopilot — Tickets become merged PRs. No approval, and PRs merge themselves once your checks pass. Agents decide on their own rather than stopping to ask — a team that has opted out of the gates has also opted out of being interrupted, which is the point.
What doesn't change
The quality gates run at every level. Code review, your test suite, the requirements check, and the revision loop all happen on Autopilot exactly as they do on Supervised. Autonomy controls who is asked, not how carefully the work is done.
Your repository's own branch protection still applies too. If a PR needs a human approver in GitHub or GitLab, Autopilot can't merge past that — it's your rule, on your side, and Premia doesn't override it.
Choosing one
Most teams start at Supervised for the first week, because watching the plans is the fastest way to learn what the agents are good at. Once the plans stop surprising you, Balanced removes the step that has stopped earning its keep.
Autopilot is worth it when your checks are genuinely trustworthy — good tests, meaningful review gates — because on Autopilot those checks are the only thing standing between a ticket and your main branch.