📖What it means

The recovery path when work fails: planner, then the Albus bypass, then the Orion bypass — one attempt per rung, tagged on the attempt. The first two rungs dispatch automatically; the third is manual, so when the Albus rung fails the pipeline HALTS and waits for the operator. That halt is the designed end-state, not a fault. Every rung of the ladder is PLANNER-LANE WORK: it is the rescue of a failed planner initiative, so the planner side's limits apply to it whoever performs the rung, it bills the planner-escalated track, and a failure counts against the planner breaker — never against the bypass lane of the agent doing the rescuing.

📖Easily confused with

[{"term": "Self-healing", "distinction": "Self-healing was an autonomous lane that diagnosed and fixed the pipeline; it is RETIRED. The ladder replaced it, and its top rung is a human."}, {"term": "Retry", "distinction": "A retry repeats the same rung; the ladder escalates to a different one."}, {"term": "Albus bypass lane", "distinction": "The lane that PERFORMS the second rung. The rung itself is planner-lane work \u2014 Albus's own bypass lane is his urgent and wish work, governed and budgeted separately."}]

📖Nuance

It is no longer a COST ladder. That was true while each rung ran on a different subscription; since the pipeline tracks were moved onto one plan (rule 1477, then 1567 onto Astra) the rungs differ in accountability and limits, not in vendor. The Orion bypass alone sits on a different subscription.

📖Also called

- the ladder
- recovery path
- the rungs

📖Filed under

Category: execution.

Service: Build Initiatives.