The Agentic Delegation Charter: A Framework for Alignment and Semantic Continuity

Agentic delegation may be initiated by a human or by an authorized artificial delegator and may involve both human and artificial participants. Each transfer can change the interpretation of a mandate, its operational specification and the authority exercised. Compliance with scoped permissions and the availability of provenance records do not, by themselves, establish that the relevant meaning of the mandate has been preserved. This paper develops the Agentic Delegation Charter (ADC), a project-specific constitutive governance framework grounded in established project management principles. Each successive delegation is treated as a subordinate project with its own justified objective, subject to applicable inherited constraints. At the centre of the framework is an authoritative, versioned project lexicon. It establishes project-specific terminological references and connects critical meanings to mandate requirements, authorization conditions and review criteria. The proposed assessment model connects the authoritative root reference, the immediate mandate, the authorized derivation path and observable actions. It combines formal checks, model-assisted semantic review and authorized intervention. Indeterminacy is recognized as a legitimate assessment outcome, distinct from the operational decision concerning which actions may proceed. The framework also examines human oversight under realistic conditions of uncertain availability, intervention delays and potential risks associated with interruption. The paper distinguishes analytical propositions from empirical hypotheses and proposes a comparative research programme to evaluate the framework’s effectiveness and operational costs. Its contribution lies in connecting project governance, semantic continuity, provenance and delegated authority within a common constitutive architecture.