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ADR-0003: ACMM autonomy levels

Status: Accepted (retroactive)

ACMM is the AI Codebase Maturity Model. Its levels are an operator’s autonomy choice; a mode is one agent’s allowed actions. In operator terms, ADVISORY means observe, ISSUES_ONLY (measured) means file issues, ISSUES_AND_PRS (holdgated) means propose code without merging, and ISSUES_PRS_MERGE (full) permits merging subject to the merge gates. The policy matrix is the current per-level roster, including the review-only converse capability.

Context

Hive needs one operator-facing control for how autonomous agents may be. The reference architecture describes ACMM as the human-selected dial that maps to per-agent modes, and the policy matrix defines which agents may only advise, file issues, open hold-gated PRs, or auto-merge at each level (architecture §6, ACMM policy matrix). The same modes feed the layered guardrails in architecture §5.

Decision

Use ACMM levels L1-L6 as the public autonomy model. Levels map deterministically to per-agent modes: advisory, issues-only/measured, issues-and-PRs/holdgated, and issues-PRs-merge/full. Raising the level is a human decision. supervisor remains advisory at every level, and brainstorm never receives GitHub write authority.

Consequences

Operators can reason about fleet risk through one level instead of many independent toggles. The same mode value drives prompt templates, credential scope, CLI deny lists, and proxy rules, which reduces configuration drift. The cost is that unusual deployments may need explicit per-agent overrides, and any new agent role must be placed deliberately in the matrix before it receives write or merge authority.