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COMPEL Glossary / delegation

Delegation

The assignment of authority from a human principal to an AI agent to act on the principal's behalf.

What this means in practice

Derived from the principal-agent literature; delegation creates the legal, ethical, and practical basis for any agentic action and requires a traceable authority chain back to an accountable human or organizational decision-maker.

Synonyms

agent delegation , principal-to-agent delegation

See also

  • Authority chain — The traceable lineage from an organization's decision-rights authority — through any delegating humans — to the agent executing the action.
  • Human oversight (Art. 14) — Under Regulation (EU) 2024/1689, the provider-designed measures that allow natural persons to understand the capacities and limitations of a high-risk AI system, monitor its operation, and intervene or interrupt it.
  • Agent Governance Pack — An executive-grade, living artefact aggregating all governance records for a deployed agent — autonomy classification, delegation and authority chain, oversight design, tool bindings, memory scope, kill-switch wiring, risk tier, incident history, and named owners.

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