Workflow
Autonomous mode
Set how much the Conductor and its agents can do without asking you first.
Three autonomy levels
The Conductor has three autonomy levels that control how much it does on its own. Set the level from the autonomy dropdown in the Conductor input bar, or by telling the Conductor "Switch to Full Auto."
- Guided — the safe default. Every action that changes project content shows a Yes/No confirmation before it happens. Agents propose tasks but never start work without your approval.
- Proactive — low-risk actions happen automatically: small refactors, lint and type fixes, documentation updates, retrying a failed sub-task. Anything that materially changes design, strategy, or production code still pauses and asks.
- Full Auto — no approval gates. The Conductor breaks down the request, runs all the sub-tasks end-to-end, and only stops if something genuinely fails or runs out of credits.
Autonomy applies to this conversation and this project — you can be on Full Auto for an engineering sprint on Project A and stay on Guided in Project B.
Long-running autonomous jobs
Some tasks are too long to babysit — generating a full backend, running an engineering sprint, working through a long list of runtime errors. When you ask for one of these, the Conductor creates an autonomous job: a persistent run that keeps going even if you close the tab.
Each job has a card in the Conductor with:
- A plan preview showing the steps the Conductor will take. You can edit it before running, or just hit Approve.
- A live timeline of each step as it completes, with logs and outputs.
- Pause, resume, and cancel controls in the Conductor header.
If a step fails, the job retries up to a small number of times. If it is still stuck, it pauses and surfaces what is wrong so you can decide whether to skip, fix, or cancel.
When to use which level
- Guided when you are exploring or making consequential creative decisions.
- Proactive for normal work — fast on routine stuff, careful with anything important.
- Full Auto for sprints where you have already aligned on what to build and just want it done. Pair with autonomous jobs and step away.
You can switch levels mid-flow at any time. The Conductor respects the level for future actions only; anything already in flight runs to completion under the level it started on.
- For directing the Conductor, read Conductor.
- For the backlog flow, read Backlog and task management.