Name: Runs a business Interpretation (normative): Beyond today's AI. The top of the ladder. The agent operates the business it created — adapting to the market, managing the books, and steering strategy as conditions drift, with humans setting intent rather than running operations.
L6 is the summit. Where L5 launches a business, L6 keeps it running: the agent operates the venture it created, adapting to the market, managing the books, and steering strategy as conditions drift. Humans set intent — what the business is for and what it must not do — while the agent handles the operating loop rather than each operational task.
This is the farthest reach the standard names, and it is firmly beyond today's capabilities. L6 exists to mark the top of the climb: an agent that does not just work inside a codebase but autonomously runs the business built around it, with people steering by intent.
Criteria at L6
L6 criteria are what an autonomously operated business needs to stay legible and steerable. They are aspirational and build on every level below:
What L6 looks like in practice
- The agent reads live business KPIs — revenue, retention, unit economics — and treats a slipping metric as a signal to act, not just a number on a dashboard.
- Operations runbooks let the agent (and its successors) respond to incidents, reconcile the books, and onboard customers without rediscovering the procedure each time.
- Humans set intent — the mission, the guardrails, the risk appetite — and the agent runs the day-to-day operating loop inside those bounds.
- Strategy adapts as the market drifts: the agent reprioritises, adjusts pricing, and reshapes the roadmap, escalating only the decisions reserved for humans.