Autonomous Mode

Overview

Autonomous Mode activates the eight FB-rules (Feedback Behaviour rules from the ecosystem’s Autonomous Agent Operating Rules mandate) as default-on for the duration of a /dr-auto cycle. It introduces no new rules of its own — it only changes the default from “conditional activation” to “always on” while the mode is active. The skill is active only when three conditions all hold: the DATARIM_AUTO_MODE=1 environment variable is set, the marker file datarim/.auto-mode-active exists and parses as YAML, and the marker’s task_id matches the current task. A mismatch (env var set, marker missing or for a different task) is treated as non-autonomous — fail-safe. The marker carries a 24-hour TTL and is silently purged once stale.

Question Suppression Ladder

Before prompting the operator, every stage walks five levels in order and stops at the first one that gives an unambiguous answer: L1 codebase grep / file read, L2 a runtime probe (health check, docker ps, git log), L3 a feedback-memory lookup in MEMORY.md, L4 bulk-context delegation to an external LLM via Coworker, and only then L5 an actual operator prompt. Two or more plausible answers at the same level with no deterministic tie-breaker always escalate to the next level rather than get guessed. Business-strategy questions (pricing, legal stance, “who is the customer”) skip straight to L5 — the ladder never invents a default for operator-intent questions.

L1 Inline Resolution Rule

Applies across every stage of a /dr-auto cycle. A discovered gap that touches a single file, stays under 50 lines of code, and changes no API/schema/contract is fixed inline and logged to datarim/tasks/{TASK-ID}-auto-inline-log.md. Anything wider — multi-file, contract-changing, or matching the hard-gated list — becomes a new backlog item instead of a silent inline patch.

Hard-gated Action Boundary

Production deploys, secret rotation, irreversible database operations without a verified backup, public communications, finance/legal actions, force-push to main, deletion of git history, and any action affecting more than one human user always escalate to the operator, regardless of mode. The boundary is resolved through a space-autonomy policy script rather than hard-coded per project; missing or malformed policy always fails closed to the operator.

Canonical source

The full contract — ladder definitions, the inline-log schema, failure-mode mitigations, and the per-command ## /dr-auto Mode integration pattern — lives in skills/autonomous-mode/SKILL.md.