# Chapter 13 - The Materiality Dial | Loop Engineering

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# Chapter 13 - The Materiality Dial: Calibrating Effort and Autonomy

                Last updated 2026-07-13. This page hosts the trust-calibration source behind Chapter 13 and links into the [extended materiality patterns by industry domain](/materiality/).

### Companion activity

Use the [materiality patterns](/materiality/) and [materiality prompts](/prompts/materiality/) to choose effort and autonomy for one real task before starting it.

### What this chapter argues

                Not every task deserves the same loop discipline. The materiality dial is a 3×3 calibration: stakes (low / medium / high) crossed with autonomy posture (supervised / bounded / autonomous). Its diagonal is a recommended starting posture, not a universal safety boundary; context, reversibility, expertise, and domain rules may require stronger controls. The chapter argues against two failure modes: over-rigging (running heavyweight ACT discipline on a typo-class task - wastes the partner's attention) and under-rigging (running a one-shot prompt on a deploy-class decision - risks the outcome). The dial helps people choose a proportionate first posture and make departures explicit.

### Key sources

Chapter 13 cites in the print book: D23, D46. Entries below are the sources this page draws on; some are related literature cited elsewhere in the book rather than in this chapter.

- D20 - Lee, J. D., and See, K. A. (2004). Trust in automation: Designing for appropriate reliance . Human Factors, 46(1), 50-80. [doi.org/10.1518/hfes.46.1.50_30392](https://api.crossref.org/works/10.1518/hfes.46.1.50_30392)

### Primary-source links

- [Lee & See (2004), "Trust in automation: Designing for appropriate reliance"](https://api.crossref.org/works/10.1518/hfes.46.1.50_30392) - the canonical trust-calibration framework. Defines over-reliance and under-reliance as twin failure modes; underwrites the dial's two-sided-failure framing.

### Chapter contents

- ACT Tenet VI (calibrate effort to stakes) and the agent-era addition (calibrate autonomy to stakes).

- Who decides, and how stakes are defined - consequence severity, reversibility, blast radius, detectability.

- The 3×3 materiality dial diagram (stakes × autonomy posture).

- The diagonal (matched effort) vs. off-diagonal (compensating controls) framing.

- The clean operational rule, and the over-rigging and under-rigging failure modes.

- The dial in four cases: when to engage reasoning, when to skip the loop entirely, when to grant agency to an agent.

### Related resources

                The [materiality patterns by domain](/materiality/) apply the 3×3 dial across software engineering, healthcare, legal, policy, education, customer support, and financial operations. Each domain entry shows where the dial sits and which compensating controls the domain demands. The [materiality prompts](/prompts/materiality/) provide stakes-assessment and autonomy-posture-selector templates.