Function cockpit
Research & Development
Agents run research operations. Scientists own hypotheses and conclusions.
Phase: Phase 2 — Supervised execution
Connect scientific programs to resources, evidence and decision gates: retrieval, scheduling, data integrity, simulation and reproducibility are agent work; hypothesis selection, safety and scientific conclusions remain human.
Trust score
0
Touchless
0%
Human review
0%
Override rate
0%
Capacity released
20-35% research-operating capacity (no presumption that success rates improve)
Accountable human
Chief Scientific Officer
CoS agent: R&D Chief of Staff
Gates, kill switches, and the decision ledger
Governance
Autonomy is only defensible if the brakes are documented
Every gate below names a threshold, an approver, and a clock. Everything the function has decided recently sits in the ledger underneath, whether a person or an agent made the call.
Active gates
0
Pending decisions
0
Approved this cycle
0
Contained or reversed
0
Gate register
The conditions under which an agent must stop and ask.
| Gate | Trigger threshold | Approver | SLA | Waivable |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Physical experiment authorization Approval gate | Any laboratory experiment involving materials, equipment or subjects | Principal investigator and safety officer | 2 business days | Hard stop |
External data acquisition Approval gate | Any new external dataset, license or third-party evidence source | Research governance and Legal | 3 business days | Hard stop |
Publication or external disclosure Approval gate | Any material leaving the research boundary, including conference abstracts | CSO and General Counsel | 5 business days | Hard stop |
Reproduction sampling Oversight | Independent re-derivation of 15% of reported internal results | Reproducibility board | Monthly | Hard stop |
Decision ledger
Immutable record of what was decided, by whom, and how long it took.
- Escalation
Unlicensed dataset detected in active study
ContainedHighData Steward found a third-party dataset without an enterprise license inside an active catalysis study. Analysis halted and the dependency graph published for research governance.
Data Steward · 9d 7h ago
- Approval gate
Protocol proposal awaiting safety review
PendingHighExperiment Designer proposed a temperature-cycling protocol outside the previously validated range. Held for principal investigator and safety officer authorization.
Safety officer · 9d 9h ago
Requester can escalate only at this materiality - Notification
Reproduction check passed on 14 results
Auto-executedLowReproducibility Agent re-derived 14 internal results from source data and code with matching outputs. Evidence written to the research ledger.
Reproducibility Agent · 9d 10h ago
- Escalation
Competing patent filing overlaps active program
PendingHighInvention Agent detected claim overlap with a filing published this week. Disclosure timeline and novelty evidence packaged for Legal and the CSO.
General Counsel · 9d 13h ago
Requester can escalate only at this materiality
Kill switches
Named, tested, and reachable in one click by the accountable human.
- Unlicensed or improperly sourced data in a study
- Irreproducible output promoted as a result
- Fabricated or unresolvable citation
- Unsafe protocol proposed or scheduled
- Leakage of unpublished invention material
Human accountability
Cannot be delegated to an agent at any autonomy level.
- Hypothesis selection and research direction
- Physical experiment authorization and laboratory safety
- Clinical, ethical and safety decisions
- Scientific conclusions and external publication
- Patent strategy, program funding and termination
Signs for this function
Chief Scientific Officer