What is Delegation?
Delegation — The passing of authority from one actor to an agent, so an agent can act for someone else.
Delegation is the primitive that answers how does an agent get the right to act? It is the transfer that lets a principal hand a scoped authority to an agent.
It is the layer that makes autonomy assignable. Delegation moves permission deliberately, so an agent acts with authority it was granted rather than took.
Where delegation sits in the stack
In the four-layer architecture of the agentic web, delegation is a Substrate (L1) concept — it the cited foundation every layer grounds in. See the thesis for how the layers compound.
Delegation in the portfolio
9 positions in the Semantic Substrate portfolio carry the Delegation primitive — 7 available individually, 2 held as a coordinated set. Explore the Delegation cluster →
Quick answers
- What is Delegation in agentic systems?
- The passing of authority from one actor to an agent, so an agent can act for someone else.
- Where does Delegation sit in the agentic stack?
- Delegation sits at the Substrate (L1) layer — it the cited foundation every layer grounds in.
- How many Delegation domain positions exist in the Semantic Substrate portfolio?
- 9 positions carry the Delegation primitive — 7 available individually, the rest held as a coordinated set.