> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.sureops.ai/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Control modes

> Supervised and Self-Driving — how sureops operates alongside your team

sureops has two control modes that determine how much autonomy the AI exercises during an active incident. You can switch between them per-incident at any time, and you can configure the default per environment, per severity level, and per action type.

***

## Supervised mode

In Supervised mode, sureops drives the incident pipeline but **proposes every action before executing it**. After each stage completes, the AI presents its findings and recommended next steps and waits for your approval. Nothing executes until a human explicitly approves.

This is the right starting point when you are:

* Evaluating sureops against your environment for the first time
* Onboarding a new environment where the AI hasn't yet built context
* Running high-stakes production incidents where you want maximum oversight
* Building team confidence in how the AI reasons about your specific stack

When you approve a recommendation, the AI proceeds. When you reject or modify it, the AI incorporates your feedback and continues with the adjusted approach. Everything you provide — corrections, additional context, chat messages during a stage — carries forward and improves the AI's reasoning for the rest of the incident.

<Note>
  Even in Supervised mode, sureops never requires you to use every stage. You can mark a stage as handled externally, skip forward, or take full manual control at any point. The AI adapts to whatever context exists.
</Note>

***

## Self-Driving mode

In Self-Driving mode, sureops drives the full incident lifecycle without waiting for per-stage approvals. It monitors your systems, detects incidents, runs through detection → triage → diagnosis → resolution → verification → closure, and notifies you when it's done — or when it hits something it can't resolve on its own.

You remain in the loop at all times:

* Real-time notifications at key milestones
* Full timeline visibility — every action the AI took, every tool it queried, and why
* One-click "Take Control" at any point to pause the AI and step in
* High-risk actions (destructive changes, production rollbacks) always require explicit approval regardless of mode — this gate cannot be removed

Self-Driving mode is appropriate once you've validated that the AI understands your environment and produces reliable diagnoses and fixes. Most teams reach this point after a few supervised incidents on non-critical environments, then expand the autonomy envelope as trust grows.

<Warning>
  P1 and P2 severity incidents are **never auto-executed without human eyes** — even in Self-Driving mode with full auto-execute enabled. High-severity incidents always pause for human review before resolution actions run.
</Warning>

***

## Switching modes

You can switch modes at any time during an active incident:

* **Take Control** — immediately signals the AI to finish its current operation and hand the incident to you. The AI doesn't stop mid-sentence; it completes its current task, saves all findings, and pauses.
* **Release to AI** — hands the incident back to autonomous operation. The AI picks up from the current stage with all context intact, including anything you added while in control.

The auto-release timer (configurable, default 60 minutes) returns control to the AI if you take control and don't explicitly release it. You can extend the timer or disable auto-release for critical incidents.

***

## How the default mode is configured

The default mode is a policy, not a fixed setting. It resolves in this precedence order:

1. **Per-stage override** on the current incident (most specific)
2. **Per-incident mode override**
3. **Environment default** (your staging vs. production environments can have different defaults)
4. **Organization default**
5. **System default** (Supervised)

You configure environment and organization defaults in **Settings → AI Agents**. Individual overrides are set from the incident hub.

<Note>
  The trust progression from Supervised to Self-Driving is always **your decision to make** — it doesn't happen automatically. sureops surfaces confidence scores and audit trails to help you decide when to grant more autonomy, but the configuration change is always manual and always reversible.
</Note>

***

Next: [Quickstart — evaluate with a demo environment](/next/getting-started/quickstart)