Escalation is the process of transferring a task upward — to a more powerful model, a specialized agent, or a human operator — when the current agent determines it lacks the capability, authority, or confidence to proceed. It is a critical safety and reliability pattern in production agentic systems, ensuring that hard problems or high-stakes decisions are not silently handled by an under-qualified handler. Escalation triggers can include repeated failures, low confidence scores, or policy-defined thresholds.