# Designing authority infrastructure around real agentic workflows.

OTIS Labs is opening a small number of selective design partnerships with organizations building, deploying, or operating agents and robots in consequential environments.

If your agent or robot does something that cannot be easily undone, or that matters if it goes wrong, someone will ask who authorized it. We want to talk.

ROBOTS AND PHYSICAL SYSTEMS

- Robots that move, lift, or hand things to people
- Lab, factory, or warehouse automation an agent now operates
- Fleets running across sites, operators, or owners
- Anything with an e-stop, where no one can say who authorized what it stopped

SOFTWARE AGENTS

- Agents that spend, send, sign, or delegate
- Agents that change records, code, or infrastructure
- Agents working across teams, tools, or organizations
- Agents in regulated or high-trust settings

Apply below, or write to [partners@otislabs.ai](mailto:partners@otislabs.ai).

## Which of these sounds like you?

- [For Engineering](https://otislabs.ai/design-partners#for-engineering)
- [For Regulators / Insurance](https://otislabs.ai/design-partners#for-regulators)
- [For Platform](https://otislabs.ai/design-partners#for-platform)

## Apply

Apply through the form at https://otislabs.ai/design-partners#apply or write to partners@otislabs.ai.

## For Engineering

A robot brings medication to a patient's room. The handoff is checked against the nurse's live mandate, and the receipt shows who authorized it and when.

A warehouse arm operates a station shared with people. Every motion that could reach a person is checked at the moment of the write, not at setup.

A fleet of delivery robots runs across three cities under three operators. Each action carries the mandate of the operator who answers for it.

An agent pays a vendor invoice. Amount, counterparty and timing are checked against the mandate before the transfer, and the receipt is what the auditor sees.

An agent updates a patient's record. The change is checked against who is allowed to change what, and the record shows the person behind the agent.

An agent deploys code to production. The deploy is refused unless a live mandate covers that service, that environment, that hour.

[Start an engineering partnership](https://otislabs.ai/design-partners#apply)

## For Regulators / Insurance

The questions you already ask of any responsible party, who authorized this, under what bounds, and who answers for it, now have to be answerable for AI agents and robots too, and with growing urgency, because these systems do not follow instructions precisely. They interpret in the moment. OTIS Labs builds the infrastructure that lets those questions be asked of an agent or a robot at the moment it acts, and answered with evidence you can rely on, so that you can assess, insure and regulate the way you already do. We are mapping how authorization receipts fit the frameworks you use today, the EU AI Act, DORA, FINRA, SEC recordkeeping, HIPAA, 21 CFR Part 11, NYDFS, GDPR, the NIST AI RMF, ISO 42001 and AIUC-1, and documenting the definitions, evidence format and conformance criteria that new ones will need. This is a growing area of research and development. We are here to work with you.

[Work with us on regulation and insurance](https://otislabs.ai/design-partners#apply)

Reading:

What a Guard receipt evidences, by regulation. (forthcoming)

Authority at the moment of action: open legal questions. (forthcoming)

## For Platform

If you maintain an agent protocol, a hardware standard, or a receipt format and are thinking about where authorization belongs in it, we want to work with you.

[Bring authorization into your protocol](https://otislabs.ai/design-partners#apply)