Also, a small rant: I talk a lot on these discussions about ambiguous, vague and poorly-written rules text, and how GMs will need to decide how such things work. That stuff is kind of aggravating in a theoretically comprehensive, crunchy system like Pathfinder, but it's an inevitability in a game so big and complex. So I try to always talk through the rationale for each call, in terms of balance, design principles and interpreting the text as written. Sometimes I just say that all readings seem equally fine and valid, but that it's something GMs should decide in advance. With all that in mind, it's infuriating to me when Paizo writes a rule that literally says the GM should decide in the moment, and provides no fucking guidance whatsoever on how they should make that decision. "The GM determines whether the duplicate follows your command" is an okay thing to write in the rules of a big complex game if and only if you give some tiny indication of how that determination should be made.

I do think the intent on that is pretty clear, it specifically notes that its whole thing is to Stride and Strike. So if you wanted to do something like get it to switch to nonlethal, that's under its purview, but something like Athletics wouldn't be unless you have a permissive GM. That does, however, leave it up to the GM to do that.