The tenth time an agent does the same task for you, you should not have to approve it. The first time, you should. Skyflo 1.8.0 holds both of those at once: a Skill does every step of the work and asks before the one that commits it, until its own record shows it no longer needs to ask. Then Skyflo offers to let it finish on its own, and you decide.
That is what we mean by earned autonomy. It came with the release that made Skyflo your AI chief of staff, and it is the rule behind Skills and areas alike. This post explains how it works and why we built it this way.
Why a Skill stops before its last step
A Skill is a task Skyflo learned once and can run again with new inputs. You can teach one by filling out a form in Skyflo's browser while it watches, by saving a mission that went well, or by attaching a document that describes the steps.
When a Skill is learned, its final step is named once: a short label such as "Submit application", plus two plain sentences for its two levels. At prepares it "Asks before submitting the application". At acts it "Submits the application on its own". Those sentences are what you see on the Skill's page and in every mission that runs it, so you always know which one is in force.
At prepares, every step before the last one runs: fields filled, choices made, files attached, values checked. Then the run stops at the step that commits something outside Skyflo on your behalf, and waits for you. That step is the only one that matters for trust. Everything before it can be redone; the submission, the payment, the message sent cannot.
The agent itself declares which action is final while it works. Skyflo does not guess from the label on a button, so a Save or a Download no longer stops a run, and a Submit always does. Whether a declared final action goes through or waits is decided by Skyflo, from two facts: whether the mission has Full Access, and the level of the Skill it is running. A Skill that commits nothing has no final step, and so nothing to earn.
Three clean runs, then an offer
A run counts as clean when it finished and its check confirmed every value against the source it came from. Skyflo keeps the streak honestly. A run that is still waiting for you, or one you cancelled, counts neither way. A failure or a mismatch ends the streak.
After three clean runs in a row, the Skill appears in Needs you on Home with one question: Let it do this on its own, or Not now. The offer says exactly what would change, in the Skill's own words: "From now on it submits the application on its own, without asking first."
Three things about that offer are deliberate.
- It is an offer, not a change. Nothing moves until you answer.
- Not now means not yet. Skyflo waits for three more clean runs before it asks again, so a declined offer does not come back every morning.
- It is only ever its own decision. No bulk action settles it. When you ask Skyflo by voice to handle what it can, it clears low-risk approvals and leaves any change to what Skyflo may do on its own for you to answer by name.
You do not have to wait for the offer, either. The Skill's page has a two-way control, with its two sentences as the choices and its record beside them: how many of its runs checked clean. You can raise or lower it whenever you like.
When the Skill runs a batch, every row adds to its record. The story of teaching Skyflo a carrier portal once and running it on every row shows that loop end to end.
Where a Skill starts, and how it goes back
A Skill you teach with Watch me starts at prepares, even though you pressed Submit yourself during the demonstration. You pressed it; Skyflo has not yet. A Skill built from a document starts at prepares too.
A Skill saved from a mission that ran in Full Access starts at acts. In that mission its final step already went through without asking, because you gave the mission standing approval. Saving the Skill does not take back a permission you already chose to give. It still returns to prepares after a mismatch or your reversal, like any other.
Authority that can only go up is a ratchet, and a ratchet is a bad thing to put between an agent and your accounts. So a Skill at acts returns to prepares on its own in two cases.
A mismatch. If a run's check finds a value that differs from its source, the Skill goes back to asking before its final step on the next run. A wrong value is exactly the moment a person should look again.
Your reversal. If you undo or correct what a Skill did, it goes back to asking as well. A correction from you is the strongest evidence there is that it should not have acted alone.
This holds whether the Skill earned acts through three clean runs or you set it yourself. In both cases the authority is reversible by default, and you can always lower it by hand.
Areas follow the same pattern
Areas are the parts of the company you hand to Skyflo: hiring, finance, customers. Each one starts at Prepares, which the area page describes as "Drafts and asks first". Missions Skyflo starts there prepare the work completely and stop before sending, paying, posting or any other consequential step, using the approval you already know.
Once you have approved steps in completed prepared missions in an area, Skyflo can offer more: "let Skyflo act on its own?", with Let Skyflo act and Keep preparing as the answers. The offer shows its evidence and states the boundary that stays: your daily limit, folders and rules stay in place. At Acts ("Acts, then tells you") missions finish inside those limits and the brief reports them. The level lives in the area's locked block, which no agent can edit, and you can move it back from the area page at any time.
Keeping the final say
"Hand off the work. Keep the final say." is the promise on our homepage. Earned autonomy is how that sentence works over months rather than minutes.
Keeping the final say does not mean approving every click forever. That turns a person into a rubber stamp, and a rubber stamp is not oversight. It means you decide where the line sits for each task and each part of the company, and you move it with evidence: a record of clean runs, approved missions, checks that matched. Skyflo can propose moving the line outward, and only you can move it. It moves back on its own when the evidence turns, an agent cannot widen its own access, and your limits cannot be learned away.
How to try it
- Download Skyflo for Mac, or update to 1.8.0.
- Teach a Skill: fill out a form in Skyflo's browser with Watch me, save a finished mission as a Skill, or attach a document that describes the steps. The Skills guide covers reusable Skills.
- Run it on real inputs. Each run stops before its final step; approve it when the prepared work is right.
- Open the Skill's page to see its record. After three clean runs, answer the offer on Home.
- Try the reverse: set the Skill back to asking from its page, and watch the next run stop where it did on day one.
How Skyflo runs a mission, and learns from it covers the rest of the loop. Download Skyflo for Mac and give a Skill its first run.