What to check
The specification names a state the human can alter, not only a decision they can approve, and the disagreement path has been exercised at least once in the last quarter.
What is an Intervention Specification?
An intervention specification replaces human in the loop with six answerable questions about who can actually change the system.
An intervention specification states who may intervene, on what signal, with what information, with authority over which state, on what timescale, and what happens when they disagree. It is the object every oversight clause should resolve to.
Ethotechnics retires human in the loop as a control name because naming a human is compatible with that human being unable to alter anything.
Canonical entry: What is an Intervention Specification? in the glossary.
A payments hold queue names two on-call reviewers, the fraud-score signal that routes cases to them, the customer history they see, authority to release or freeze the account, a four-minute budget per case, and an escalation path to the duty manager when they disagree with the model.
Implementation
Distinct implementation signals
Unique operational detail to help this concept stand on its own in policy, procurement, and review workflows.
Common failure pattern
Oversight is specified as a role and a meeting. The reviewer sees a score without the underlying case, has no authority to change a policy, and no defined route when they disagree.
Evidence to ship
Report the share of oversight points with a complete specification, and the number of reviewer-initiated state changes per thousand reviews alongside median review time.
Doctrine
Law IX: oversight is a control only if state can change
The invariant that turns an oversight claim into a testable specification.
Eval
Meaningful control
The Law IX question set, applied to each review point in a deployment.
Glossary
Meaningful control
The condition an intervention specification is written to establish.
Why retire human in the loop?
Because it names a position rather than a capability. A human can be in the loop and still lack information, authority, time, or permission to disagree, which means they are not part of the control system.
Does every automated step need one?
No. It is needed wherever an oversight claim is being made. If no oversight is claimed for a step, the specification is not required, but the claim cannot then be made in an assurance document.