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The Escalation Handoff

Escalation to Human

Definition

The Architect's Playbook decision tree for routing user input to a human — with an immediate branch for explicit requests and a context-gathering branch for policy issues — plus the structured summary payload the human receives.

Key points

  • Decision tree from User Input:
    • "I want a human NOW." → Immediate Escalation — honor it immediately, do not ask for more clarification (via escalate_to_human). See Explicit-request-overrides rule.
    • Complex Policy Issue → Context Gathering (get_customer) — first ensure account-context tools are called → then payload data flow.
  • The payload: a structured summary — do NOT dump raw transcripts. Pass: Customer ID, Root Cause, Amount, Recommended Action (full list in Structured handoff summary).
    • Example: customer_id: "CUST-847392", root_cause: "Duplicate charges due to gateway timeout.", amount: "$47.00 USD", recommended_action: "Approve refund for $47.00 USD and notify customer."
  • Pairs with Zero-Tolerance Compliance: a server-side policy intercept blocks the action and routes here.

Why it matters for the exam

  • README study focus item (the Escalation Handoff decision tree). Tests the two branches and the "structured summary, not raw transcript" payload rule.

Common gotchas

  • Explicit human request skips context-gathering; policy issues require it first — don't swap them.
  • Dumping the transcript is wrong; escalating with no context is a failure.

See also

Sources

Referenced by