Set how much kanman does on its own
Pick a trust level for a team, see who decides at each step from intake to live, and change single steps without losing track.
Team settings > Autonomy answers one question on one screen: how much does kanman do on its own in this team, and what always comes to you? It is the first page of a team’s settings.
The page has three parts:
- Trust: five levels, from Trial to Hardening.
- From intake to live: the seven steps a story takes, each with who decides there, you or kanman.
- Small housekeeping: the small things kanman tidies up along the way.
Everything saves as soon as you change it. A short message offers Undo for a few seconds.
The five trust levels
| Level | Stories at the same time | Who brings in work | Acceptance spec required | Paths protected by default |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trial | 1 | People | No | infra/**, **/*.tf, .github/workflows/** |
| Focused | 1 | People | Yes | same as Trial |
| Balanced | 2 | People and kanman | Yes | same as Trial |
| Autonomous | 4 | People and kanman | Yes | .github/workflows/** |
| Hardening | 2 | People and kanman | Yes | same as Trial |
Autonomous also lets kanman start low-risk stories, review its own plans and merge work that passed every check. Hardening also switches on maintenance for a team that has it off.
The setup of a new team suggests Balanced. Parallel runs are also capped by the team’s plan: Starter 2, Team 5 (also during the 14-day trial), Enterprise up to 20.
What a level never changes
These hold at every level and cannot be switched off:
- Executors can never change
.kanman/acceptance/**. - The diff guard, the clean-room run and the sandbox are always on.
- Touching production data, changing the security posture and overspending always stop and ask.
- Protected paths and diff limits are checked before the run and again on the final diff.
A level also keeps what belongs to your team and not to trust: the team’s rituals (the delivery review and the retrospective day), the maintenance scan interval and your maintenance settings stay as they are when you switch.
Which level when
- Trial is for the first week with a new repository, especially one without an acceptance manifest. Evidence says plainly when no outcome proof exists.
- Focused is for teams that want kanman to work only on what people filed, one story at a time, while trust is being built.
- Balanced fits most teams after the first weeks. If you are unsure, choose Balanced.
- Autonomous says “I trust you within these boundaries”. kanman decides on its own wherever it can and comes to you only when it is unsure, needs your input or the work crosses a boundary. See Autonomous mode and the team heartbeat. Check the protected paths before you switch: only CI workflows stay protected by default.
- Hardening is Balanced plus a steady drip of maintenance work.
Switch the level
- Open the team, then Settings > Autonomy.
- Point the dial at another level. Nothing changes yet: the steps that would change lift, their face shows who would decide, and a list says exactly what changes, for example Stories at the same time: 2 → 4 or I merge work that passed every check.
- Choose Apply to switch, or Keep to leave everything as it is.
The change applies to new runs right away; runs in progress keep the policy they started with. Undo in the message brings the previous level back.
Change a single step
Tap a step to change who decides there. The steps you change on this page are:
| Step | Your choices |
|---|---|
| Intake | Who brings in work: only people, or people and kanman. Who moves stories to Ready: you, or kanman starts low-risk work itself as run slots free up. |
| Plan | You approve every plan, you approve plans from a size (S, M or L), kanman reviews its own plans, or no plan approval. |
| Checks | When a check fails: kanman reworks once and then asks you, or asks you at once. |
| Merge | You merge every change, kanman merges small, verified changes up to a line limit, or kanman merges low-risk work. Letting kanman merge on its own asks first. |
Build, Review and Live show what happens there and link to the page where you set it: the coding agent, code review and what happens after the merge.
A step with decisions waiting for a person shows how many, for example 2 waiting, and leads to them.
When a choice differs from the level, the dial reads Balanced, adjusted. Reset to Balanced shows what going back would change, and applies it when you confirm. Only trust settings count: rituals, the scan interval and maintenance never make a team “adjusted”.
What always comes to you
Under the steps, Always comes to you lists the kinds of work kanman never decides on its own, however confident it is: by default data migrations, payments and billing, deleting data, and authentication, permissions and secrets. Choose Change to add infrastructure and CI (pipeline files such as .gitlab-ci.yml, deployment and production configuration) or major dependency upgrades, or to remove one. A boundary you keep means kanman always asks you before merging work that touches it. They apply while kanman reviews its own work (the Plan step); see High-risk changes follow your boundaries.
Small housekeeping
Open Small housekeeping to decide, for each small action, whether kanman does it on its own, tells you, or asks you first: writing acceptance criteria, adjusting a priority within its band, linking or closing duplicates, reordering the backlog, nudging a stalled run, splitting a story, and pausing a run that goes in circles. Levels can only go up from what kanman does by default.
Every setting is described in Policy settings. Every change is written to the audit log with your name.
Recommended path
- Week 1: Trial, while you add the acceptance manifest.
- Weeks 2 to 3: Focused, with every plan approved by you.
- After that: Balanced, with plans approved from size M.
- Optionally Hardening for repositories that need steady upkeep, or Autonomous once you trust kanman within your boundaries.
Last updated: January 1, 0001
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