Agency

Agency is the ability to take purposeful action based on understanding, context and intent. When a system has agency, it doesn’t just respond to inputs — it evaluates the situation, considers what it’s trying to achieve and chooses actions that meaningfully support that goal.

We use agency as a core design principle for how intelligence behaves inside Decidr. Agency is what allows apps to move beyond scripted automation and operate with intent. Rather than waiting for explicit instructions, agentic apps evaluate goals, constraints and context to determine the most appropriate next action.

In Decidr, agency is grounded in structure. Apps don’t act independently in isolation, their agency is shaped by your ontology, schema and goals.

This supports actions to remain aligned across the organisation. A finance app, an operations app and a customer app may all exercise agency, but they do so using the same definitions of success, risk and priority.

Agency in Decidr is also bounded. It operates within clearly defined decision spaces, ownership models and human-in-the-loop checkpoints. This makes agency reliable and auditable rather than unpredictable or uncontrolled.

Agency changes how much effort it takes to run your business. Instead of constantly supervising systems or resolving edge cases manually, you gain intelligence that can handle ambiguity and adapt in real time.

For your business, this means faster execution, fewer breakdowns and better use of human attention. Your team can focus on strategic thinking and judgment, while agentic apps manage operational decisions within clear boundaries.

Over time, agency compounds. As your apps learn from outcomes and refine their reasoning, your organisation becomes more capable, more responsive and more resilient to change.

You’ll see agency expressed in behaviours such as:

• An app choosing to delay action until better data is available
• A system resolving conflicts between competing goals
• A workflow rerouting itself when constraints change
• Apps proposing alternatives instead of failing when blocked

Rather than blindly executing instructions, the system behaves like a thoughtful operator that understands what it’s responsible for.

Agency turns automated systems into intelligent ones that act with purpose, not just instructions.