Escalation Governance

Overview

Model escalation (haiku→sonnet→opus) trades speed/cost for reasoning capability. This trade-off must be justified.

Core principle: Escalation is for tasks that genuinely require deeper reasoning, not for "maybe a smarter model will figure it out."

The Iron Law

NO ESCALATION WITHOUT INVESTIGATION FIRST

Verification: Run the command with --help flag to verify availability.

Escalation is never a shortcut. If you haven't understood why the current model is insufficient, escalation is premature.

When to Escalate