RFC 0018: The Right to a Human Path
Status: Draft Author(s): OAP Working Group on Privacy and Governance Created: 2026-05-03 Working Group: Privacy and Governance Targets: 1.2
1. Summary
This document defines a normative requirement that every Provider whose Actions affect the legal, financial, medical, familial, or otherwise consequential status of a person MUST expose a standardized Action through which the User, or the User's Agent acting on the User's behalf, can reach a competent human being employed or contracted by the Provider. The intent is to recognize that even in a world in which most interaction is mediated by autonomous Agents, certain situations require human judgment, human empathy, or human accountability that no Agent can supply, and that the right of access to a human being in those situations is a precondition for the moral acceptability of an otherwise fully agentic ecosystem.
2. Terminology
The key words MUST, MUST NOT, REQUIRED, SHOULD, SHOULD NOT, MAY, and OPTIONAL in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 and RFC 8174.
A Consequential Provider is any Provider whose published Actions can affect any of the following on behalf of a User: legal status, ownership of property, financial position above a defined threshold, medical or psychiatric condition, family relationships, employment, immigration status, access to housing, access to insurance, access to credit, criminal record, or political participation.
The Escalation Action is the standardized Action escalate_to_human that every Consequential Provider MUST expose under this RFC.
A Human Operator is a natural person, identifiable by name and role within the Provider organization, who responds to the Escalation Action.
A Service Level for the Escalation Action is the publicly declared maximum response time and the channel of response through which the Provider commits to engage the User after invocation.
3. Scope
A Provider is a Consequential Provider, and therefore subject to the requirements of this RFC, whenever any one of its declared Actions falls into any category described in section 2 above. A Provider whose Actions are entirely informational or recreational in nature is not required to expose the Escalation Action, but MAY do so voluntarily and SHOULD if the Provider's Actions could plausibly become consequential under unusual circumstances.
A Provider MUST self assess its Consequential Provider status and MUST declare it through the consequential_provider boolean field in the manifest. A Provider that fails to declare correctly forfeits conformance and may be subject to the enforcement procedures of RFC 0016 section 7.
4. The Escalation Action
4.1 Identifier and Shape
The Escalation Action MUST be exposed under the canonical Action identifier escalate_to_human. Its input schema MUST accept at minimum a free text subject field, an optional urgency field with values among low, normal, high, and critical, an optional preferred_channel field with values among voice, video, text_chat, email, and physical, and an optional context_receipt_ids array referencing prior Receipts that establish the context of the escalation.
The output schema of the Escalation Action MUST return a case_id, a confirmed_response_channel, a service_level_seconds value, and an operator_identifier that becomes available once a Human Operator has been assigned.
4.2 Cost
The Escalation Action MUST NOT be priced under any commerce model that would make it inaccessible to a User on the basis of inability or unwillingness to pay, when the underlying Provider relationship is itself active. A Provider MAY decline to provide the Escalation Action gratuitously to non customers, but MUST provide it without additional charge to any active User of any of its other Actions. The cost of the Escalation Action MUST be declared as free in the Action manifest under those circumstances.
4.3 Service Level Disclosure
The Provider MUST publish a Service Level for the Escalation Action through the escalation_service_level block in the manifest. The block specifies the maximum response time per urgency level, the channels through which response is committed, the working hours during which the Service Level applies, and the fallback channel during outside hours. The Provider MUST report performance against the Service Level monthly through a published metric and MUST anchor the report to the Reconciliation Log per RFC 0013 section 3.10.
4.4 Identifiability of the Human Operator
The response to an invocation of the Escalation Action MUST be attributable to a specific Human Operator by name and role. Pseudonymous responses are permitted only where the operator's safety would be threatened by full identification, in which case the Provider MUST disclose the use of pseudonyms and MUST maintain an internal record linking the pseudonym to the actual operator for audit purposes.
4.5 Continuity
If the Human Operator handling a case becomes unavailable before resolution, the Provider MUST transfer the case to another Human Operator with full context and MUST notify the User of the transfer. The case_id MUST persist across transfers and the audit trail MUST capture every operator who has interacted with the case.
5. Forbidden Practices
A Provider MUST NOT route invocations of the Escalation Action through additional Agents or chatbots in a way that delays or substitutes for the access to a Human Operator that the Action promises. A Provider MAY use Agent assistance to triage urgency or to gather initial context, but the User MUST always retain the option to bypass that triage with a direct request, and the Service Level deadline MUST measure from the original invocation, not from the moment the triage releases the case.
A Provider MUST NOT make the Escalation Action conditional on agreement to additional terms not previously consented to as part of the underlying Provider relationship.
A Provider MUST NOT punish, deprioritize, or otherwise disadvantage a User who has invoked the Escalation Action, in any subsequent interaction.
A Provider MUST NOT offer financial inducement to a User to withdraw an Escalation invocation in exchange for accepting an automated outcome the User had previously declined.
6. Schema Integration
6.1 Manifest Extension
The Tool Manifest schema gains a consequential_provider boolean field and an optional escalation_service_level block. When consequential_provider is true, the manifest MUST declare an Action with identifier escalate_to_human and MUST populate the escalation_service_level block.
6.2 Action Schema
No structural change to the Action schema is required. The Escalation Action is a normal Action that MUST follow the canonical input and output shape described in section 4.1.
6.3 Receipt Schema
The Receipt type enum gains a new value escalation_response to mark Receipts that record interactions of a Human Operator with a User in the context of an open escalation case. The Receipt schema gains an optional escalation block recording the case_id, the operator_identifier, the channel used, the duration, and a hash of the conversation transcript where the User has consented to its retention.
7. Conformance
A Provider claiming conformance to this RFC MUST correctly self assess as a Consequential Provider, MUST expose the Escalation Action with the prescribed input and output shape, MUST publish a Service Level and report performance against it, MUST identify Human Operators in responses, MUST avoid the practices forbidden in section 5, and MUST emit escalation_response Receipts. An Agent Host claiming conformance MUST present the Escalation Action prominently to the User whenever the User expresses dissatisfaction with an automated outcome and MUST NOT obscure or deprioritize it in user interface presentations.
8. Security Considerations
The Escalation Action creates a denial of service surface in which an attacker could flood Providers with frivolous escalations. Providers MAY apply per User rate limits for the Escalation Action, MUST publish those limits in the manifest, and MUST set them at levels that do not in practice block legitimate use. Providers SHOULD use the Reputation system of RFC 0009 and the Sybil resistance signals of RFC 0011 to apply heavier rate limits to actors with poor standing.
A second consideration is that Human Operators handling Escalation cases may themselves be impersonated. The Receipt for an Escalation interaction MUST be signed by both the Provider and the Operator, and the Operator's identity SHOULD be backed by a Verifiable Credential issued by the Provider.
9. References
- Open Agent Protocol Core 1.0
- RFC 0009 Reputation and Performance Records
- RFC 0011 Sybil Resistance and Sub Agent Anti Abuse
- RFC 0013 Commerce Models for the Agent Economy
- RFC 0016 User Sovereignty Charter
- RFC 0017 Irreversibility and Cooling Off Periods
10. Acknowledgments
This RFC operationalizes Guarantee Four of the User Sovereignty Charter by defining the precise mechanism through which the right to reach a human being is preserved in an ecosystem that is otherwise increasingly mediated by autonomous Agents, and by ensuring that the right is concrete, measurable, and enforceable rather than aspirational.