What is delegation poker?

Delegation poker is a concept in personal epistemology: Delegation ranges from "do exactly this" to "handle it entirely" — know which level you are using.

Example: You ask a junior developer to deploy the hotfix. They deploy it to production without running the test suite, taking down the checkout flow for 14 minutes. You're frustrated — but you never specified the level. Did you mean 'follow this exact runbook' (Level 1) or 'own the deployment end to end' (Level 7)? They heard full autonomy. You meant supervised execution. The mismatch wasn't about competence — it was about an unlabeled rung on the ladder.

This concept is part of Phase 27 (Delegation Patterns) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for delegation patterns.