Autonomy marketed as a single switch trains teams to confuse convenience with control. Asante OS uses a ladder: different rungs for different blast radii.
HOOTL — hands off the loop
Inner loops can run without a human in every step when verification is continuous and failure is cheap to reverse. HOOTL is earned, not assumed.
HOTL — human on the loop
Outer loops keep a human interruptible: oversight, sampling, and the ability to halt without being the bottleneck on every micro-decision.
HITL — human in the loop
Sensitive gates — irreversible actions, high-stakes commitments, ambiguous policy — require explicit human approval. That is a feature, not a lag.
Kill switch
If you cannot stop it, you do not control it. Haltability sits beside the ladder, not below the marketing fold.