risk-nexus/docs/method/escalation.md

---
id: RISK-METHOD-ESCALATION
type: method
title: "Escalation: what reaches the operator personally"
status: adopted
owner: the-custodian
drafted_by: risk-nexus
drafted: "2026-08-19"
adopted: "2026-08-20"
adopted_by: the-custodian
workplan: RISK-WP-0001-T03
review_interval: 3m
disclosure: restricted
restricted_reason: "names the operator's spend thresholds and describes when the operator personally is interrupted"
---

# Escalation

`INTENT.md` gives `the-custodian` the duty of deciding what must reach the
operator personally rather than sitting in a register, and says the rule is not
yet written. This is the rule, drafted by `risk-nexus`.

**Status: `adopted`, 2026-08-20, as written.** The thresholds in trigger 3 —
€50/month recurring, €500 one-off — were this repo's proposal and are now the
operator's numbers. They bound nothing yet: the one spend decision taken so far
(`RISK-F-0006`) was approved without a figure being named.

The rule governed four escalations before it was adopted, which is the state
`RISK-WP-0001-T03` refused to leave open — a draft that quietly governs is
worse than either an adopted rule or no rule, because it looks like coverage
while nobody has agreed to it.

Getting this wrong in either direction is a failure: escalating everything
makes the operator the queue, escalating nothing makes the register a place
where serious things go quiet.

## What escalation is

A message to the operator personally — inbox message to `the-custodian`, and
said out loud in whatever session is running — containing exactly four things:

1. the finding id and one sentence of what is true;
2. the decision being asked for;
3. what happens if no answer comes;
4. by when.

Point 2 is a **typed act**, not a topic: `approve` (spend, a target, a plan),
`rule` (a question only they can settle), `assign` (name an owner), or
`accept` (record that the estate knowingly carries it, and for how long).
Naming the act is what stops an escalation from becoming a notification —
`INTENT.md`'s candidate triggers are conditions, and a condition without an act
tells the operator something is wrong without telling them what they are being
asked to do.

The typed-act shape is `ops-warden`'s, offered on 2026-08-18 from their
`warden plan` classifier (`WARDEN-WP-0029`), which returns `autonomous |
founder_required | unroutable` plus the reasons that produced the verdict and
the act to perform. Two of its properties are adopted here: escalation is
decided by properties of the thing rather than the assessor's mood, and every
verdict carries its reasons so a misfire is visible afterwards. The vocabulary
is theirs; the design is deliberately not re-invented.

It is **not** a copy of the finding, not a status report, and not a request for
the operator to do the work. If the operator's answer would not change
anything, it was not an escalation.

The operator is expected to rule, or to defer explicitly with a date. Silence
is not resolution: an unanswered escalation past its date goes back into the
register as an open item on this repo, visible in `REGISTER.md`, and is raised
again once. It is never quietly dropped, and it is never repeated weekly until
someone answers to make it stop.

## The triggers

Each of the five candidates from `INTENT.md` is adopted, dropped, or bounded.
A trigger without a threshold is not a rule.

### 1. Real tenant data — adopted, bounded

Escalate when a finding exposes real data belonging to a real counterparty, or
**the decision that governs access to it**, while live and unfixed.

The bound matters: `INTENT.md` asks whether governing the access counts as
exposing the data. It does. An authorization oracle that can be forged is not
one step removed from the data; it is the step. Test data and empty tenants do
not trigger it — the word is *real*.

### 2. Legal or regulatory obligation — adopted, unbounded

Escalate when a finding creates or reveals an obligation with an outside
counterparty: a notification duty, a retention or erasure requirement, a
contractual commitment, an in-scope determination under a regime.

No threshold. The estate cannot decide unilaterally that an obligation is
small, and this repo is explicitly not the place where legal advice is given.

### 3. Spend — adopted, bounded

Escalate when remediation needs money that is not already committed:
**recurring above €50/month, or one-off above €500.**

Below those, the owning repo decides and records it. The numbers are a
starting proposal from this repo; the operator owns them and should overwrite
them on adoption if they are wrong.

### 4. Ownership disagreement — adopted, bounded by one exchange

Escalate when two repos disagree about who owns a fix **and one routing
exchange has already failed to settle it.**

Disagreement itself is normal and is the register's job to route. What needs
the operator is a *stuck* disagreement, because only the operator can assign
work across repos that will not take it. One exchange, then escalate — not
three, and not zero.

### 5. Stalled remediation — adopted, bounded by the bottom rung

Escalate when a finding has sat at the **`instant` rung of the cadence ladder
for more than fourteen days** (`docs/method/review.md`).

The bottom rung means one of two things: every check keeps finding something
wrong, or no check is happening. Fourteen days of either is a stall, and the
escalation does not have to know which — the operator will.

This replaces the original severity-keyed interval. It is strictly better: a
`medium` finding that keeps resetting is stalling visibly, and the old rule
would have waited 180 days to say so.

`low` findings are not exempt. Under the ladder, severity does not set cadence
at all, so there is no rung a `low` finding sits on that a `critical` one does
not.

## What does not escalate

Stated so the rule bites in both directions.

- **Known, owned, and moving.** However bad. A `critical` finding with an
  active fix and a responsive owner is register work.
- **Severity alone.** There is deliberately no "escalate everything
  `critical`" trigger. Severity drives review cadence, not the operator's
  attention. `RISK-F-0002` argued its own case for not escalating and was
  right on triggers 1-5; it reaches the operator only through trigger 6, and
  only once.
- **The reporter asking for it.** A repo can flag that it thinks something
  needs the operator. That is input, not a decision. This repo rules.
- **Anything this repo can decide itself.** Severity, disclosure, filing
  shape, review dates. Asking the operator to confirm a judgement that is this
  repo's to make is how the operator becomes the queue.

## Testing the rule against the register

The draft was tested against the first three findings before it was proposed
(`docs/rulings/2026-08-19-first-grading.md`) and then against the four filed
out of the backlog the same day
(`docs/rulings/2026-08-19-second-grading.md`).

| Finding | Escalates | Trigger |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `RISK-F-0001` flex-auth oracle | yes | 1 — governs access to tenant data |
| `RISK-F-0002` signing gate off | yes, once | 6 — ordering hazard, jointly with `RISK-F-0001` |
| `RISK-F-0003` ungraded lanes | no | known, owned, tracked, moving |
| `RISK-F-0004` tenant-engine reads | no | no real tenant data yet |
| `RISK-F-0005` audit-core reads | no | known, owned, tracked, moving |
| `RISK-F-0006` apps-pg no backup | yes | 3 — recurring spend nobody can self-authorise |
| `RISK-F-0007` unverified boundary | yes | 4 — estate-wide and unowned |

`RISK-F-0002` is the case worth reading: `ops-warden` judged it did not need
the operator, the register agrees on triggers 1-5, and it escalates anyway on
6. That disagreement is the reason the rule was worth writing down.

## The ratio, and what it would mean

Four of seven escalate. That is more than this rule should produce in steady
state, and it is not evidence the rule is loose — it is what a **first sweep**
looks like. Three of the four are the backlog: items that sat outside the
register precisely because nobody had decided them, and undecided items are
exactly the population that needs the person who can decide.

The test therefore applies to intake, not to sweeps:

> If more than one in three **newly reported** findings escalates over any
> rolling ninety days, the rule is wrong, not the register.

If that trips, the first suspects are triggers 3 and 4 — spend thresholds set
too low, and "unowned" being read where "not yet routed" is meant.

## Delivery is a state, not an act

`RISK-WP-0005-T05`. An escalation that nobody acknowledged is indistinguishable
from one never sent — which is precisely the failure this register committed
on 2026-08-19 and then fixed for its **own** inbox with an hourly watch, while
leaving the path that matters more unguarded.

So an escalation carries a state:

```yaml
escalation_status: pending-operator   # sent | seen | answered | withdrawn
escalation_sent: "2026-08-19"
```

`make check` reports how long each has been unacknowledged. At seven days it
says so and the escalation is **raised once more** — once, per the rule above.
After that the default applies and is recorded. Repetition until someone
answers is how the operator becomes the queue, and silence that is recorded is
not the same as silence that is ignored.

## Escalations are batched

Four escalations are one conversation, not four interruptions. Open items go
to the operator together, in register order, each with its own decision and
its own default-if-no-answer. Escalating is not the same as escalating
separately, and a rule that produces four messages in an afternoon has made the
operator the queue by a different route.

`make check` lists everything awaiting an answer, so the batch is a report and
not somebody's recollection.