Schedules · act, escalate, defer
Autonomy with a spine.
Letting agents run on schedules is easy. Deciding when they should not is the actual product. Before every scheduled run, Quox passes the job through five ordered gates and lands on one of three decisions: act, escalate to a human, or defer. No vibes, no risk scores: gates, in order, on the record.
Included in QuoxCOREFree, self-hosted, nothing to buy.
In plain words
What it is, where it lives, when to reach for it
- What is it
- A decision layer in QuoxCORE that gates every scheduled agent run: act, escalate to a human, or defer.
- Where do I use it
- In the dashboard: schedules live on the Triggers page, and escalations arrive in your Inbox.
- When would I use it
- When agents run on schedules without you watching and some runs should not go ahead.
- How do I use it
- You do not run the gates; schedule an agent on the Triggers page and every run is checked automatically.
QuoxCORE is the free, self-hosted platform underneath this. What is QuoxCORE
The vocabulary
Act. Escalate. Defer.
actAct
The gates are clear: the run dispatches with its own token, tool-call and runs-per-day budget.
▸ dispatch · budgetedescalateEscalate
Something needs judgement: a budget warning or a high-risk tool in the plan. The run parks as pending approval and a human gets it in the inbox.
▸ pending_approval · inboxdeferDefer
The budget is spent or the retry limit is reached. The run stands down and says so, rather than burning money to look busy.
▸ deferred · stated reasonThe order matters
Five gates, in order.
Budget exhausted
Budget warning
High-risk tool in the plan
SSH execution, system administration, extended docker control, VM actions and security audits are always on that list.
Retry limit reached
Schedule close to its failure cap
First gate that fires wins. Nothing proceeds by default past a warning.
The routine fleet
Agents on a rota, on a leash.
Cron schedules with timezones, a task template, an escalation policy and a budget per run. Three consecutive failures stands a schedule down by default. The security agent sweeps six-hourly on fifty thousand tokens a run; the metrics agent samples every fifteen minutes on thirty thousand. And the orchestrator itself is not allowed to run autonomously at all, which is exactly how you want the one holding the keys.
cron + timezone · budget per run · failure caps
Triggers
Plain words in, cron out.
Describe when in plain language and Quox writes the schedule: triggers carry a calendar view as well as a list, so the fleet's week reads like a diary. Pause, resume, search and attribute every trigger to the agent that owns it.
nl to cron · calendar and list views
A dedicated CalendarQ surface for the whole fleet's diary is on the roadmap. ▸ coming · calendarq
The handoff
Escalations land on a person.
An escalated run files an approval into the inbox, assigned to the schedule's owner, with approve and deny a keystroke away. The autonomy framework does not have a second inbox: it uses the one you already work.
kind approval · assigned to owner
Every decision
Deciding is an event.
Each act, escalate and defer writes a decision row and emits an envelope onto the evidence chain, with the gate that fired and why. Twenty-eight tests hold the decision engine to its word.
autonomy_decisions · quox.autonomy.decision.*
Licence-tiered authority ceilings arrive with licence enforcement. ▸ coming · authority levels
Ready when you are
Let them run. On your terms.
The autonomy framework ships with QuoxCORE: schedules, gates and escalation included.