Fable
After the apprentice received the city gate key, the master first drew the neighborhood boundaries
The apprentice at the archive could previously only read the shelves inside the building. When he encountered outside-city notices, shop prices, and government forms, he could only ask a runner to go look. Later, the curator gave him a pass to leave the city. The apprentice could go to notice boards to copy information, fill out forms for people, and even select goods at shop counters. The first day was astonishingly efficient. Many things that used to take half a day to wait for could now be done in one trip. The curator thought, since the apprentice is clever, let him wander on his own.
Problems came along with it. On the street there were fake notices, pop-up signs, lookalike counters, expired price boards, and windows demanding a stamped payment. Apprentices sometimes copied the wrong source, and sometimes clicked on a counter they shouldn't have.
Someone suggested having the apprentice come back and ask at every step. This was safe, but so slow it lost meaning; even simple queries were queued for approval.
The director re-established the rules for going out: which districts could be visited, which actions were view-only, which actions required confirmation, and payment and submission must be human-approved; every visit had to leave a record of what was seen, clicked, the result, and errors.
The apprentice also learned to first observe the whole street, then find the target counter; when encountering access control, identity verification, private ledgers or irrevocable seals, stop and hand it to the curator.
The hardest part is the payment window. An apprentice can look at prices, compare goods, and fill out drafts, but cannot casually press the seal and pay silver; when encountering unfamiliar streets and alleys, he must bring back the signboard, door plate, and source, and let the master first judge whether they are genuine.
The curator also had the apprentice submit a record of each trip out of the city every day: where he went, what he saw, what he clicked, and which places he had no permission for. After several reviews, everyone realized that the most dangerous thing was not going out itself, but treating the street signs, buttons, and fake doorplates as trustworthy instructions. Later the apprentice worked faster, but no longer wandered around on his own. The exit pass was still in his hand, and the boundary was in his mind; being able to open the city gate only meant he had one more ability to act, not that every door should be pushed open.
In the end, this exit pass did not turn the apprentice into a wanderer; it turned the outer-city counter into a controllable tool. The capability lies not in being able to leave the city, but in being able to act reliably and traceably in real scenarios.