---
title: Cost of contact
summary: No-touch, low-touch, high-touch. The rule for which research an agent can run and which needs a person in the room.
type: concept
order: 4
loop_stage: discovery/listening
domains: [people, economics]
status: working
version: 0.1
updated: 2026-10-25
sources: [DRF v1.0 deck (2011), PayPaw Stranger Gate (2026-09-19)]
confidence: stated
related: [the-loops, well-informed-space, triton]
---

Research methods sort by how much contact they need with real people. The 2011 deck called these tiers no-touch, low-touch and high-touch. The point was to make research cheap enough to actually happen. With agents doing part of the work, the same tiers decide who does what.

## The tiers

| Tier | Methods (2011 list) | With agents |
| --- | --- | --- |
| No-touch | Web and video analytics, social sharing, heat-mapping, mouse-tracking, heuristic reviews | Agents run it, unattended, on a schedule |
| Low-touch | Remote usability, online card sorting, A/B and multivariate tests, surveys, engagement analytics, social listening | Agents draft and run; a person reviews in one pass |
| High-touch | Participatory design, contextual inquiry, focus groups, moderated usability, stakeholder interviews, hallway testing | A person does it. This is where judgment and discernment live |

## A field note: what the sensors missed

In September 2026, a pet parent trying out PayPaw needed more than 40 minutes, with the founder helping, to almost pay a $100 invoice. The invite link broke inside Yahoo Mail's in-app browser, the wrong email went out, and there was no way to copy the link. None of the automated audits caught it. A real person on a real mail client did.

The fix became a nightly check that walks a cold start through a real inbox. High-touch contact found the problem; a no-touch sensor now guards it. That is the whole idea in one incident.

**In the harness** (working proposal): a routing rule. Cost of contact decides what an agent runs on its own, what it drafts for review, and what it hands to a person.

## Open questions

- Checks can prove a finding is grounded in evidence. They can't prove it matters. Where does that judgment get recorded?