Approvals

Decide how much a bot can do without asking you first.

Choose a mode

Open Settings → Approvals and pick a Mode:

• Ask: the bot asks before any action that changes something, such as sending an email or editing a document. Reading usually doesn’t ask.
• Auto: an approval model checks each action against what you asked for. Actions that fit go ahead; the bot asks when one is off-task, or can’t be undone and you didn’t ask for it.
• Never ask: every action runs without waiting.

Auto needs an Approval model, set in Settings → Models. See Models.

Approval cards

When a bot needs a yes, it posts a card in the chat showing exactly what it wants to do:

• Allow once: just this time.
• Always allow this tool, or Always allow a site: stop asking for it.
• Deny: the bot doesn’t do it and carries on.

Cards never block the chat. Keep talking to the bot, and answer the card whenever you’re ready. You get a notification when a bot is waiting on you, if notifications are on in the bot’s settings.

Allow and Block lists

Every Always allow choice is saved in Settings → Approvals. Switch any entry between Allow and Block, or Remove it. A blocked action is refused without a card, in every mode. Preview shows what would happen for a given tool before you change anything.

To stop one bot from ever using a tool, open the bot’s settings, expand Advanced, and use Disable a tool under Tools.

What always asks

In Auto and Ask, these always show a card, and Always allow doesn’t skip it:

• Changing a bot’s instructions or model, and creating a space.
• Actions that text you didn’t write could be steering, such as changes in a run started by a webhook. When it asks despite an Always allow, its card says so.
• A routine that watches a command, or that names a site the run found in outside content.

Never ask runs all of them. The one exception is accepting another owner’s bot connection, which it refuses when someone else started the run or outside content entered it.

Spending limit

Once a bot can pay, with a card in the Vault or a connected wallet, Settings → Approvals also shows a Spending limit: an amount, in US dollars, euros, pounds or shekels, that resets every day, week or month, or never. Days and months follow your timezone; weeks start on Monday. It covers every bot and space on your account, and only you can change it.

Every payment you approve counts against it: a checkout’s pay button at the total the page shows, or the amount the button names if that is more, and a wallet purchase at its exact amount. A pay button counts when the bot’s page browser recognizes it as paying, the same presses that always ask; on a computer without the page browser, nothing is recognized, so only wallet purchases count. A payment that would go over the limit is refused before you are asked, and the bot tells you. While a limit is set, a checkout whose total can’t be read, or is in another currency, is refused too. A wallet purchase that is denied, expires or fails stops counting, and so does a press the page refused because it changed. A press that went through still counts if the shop later declines it.

Below the limit, Recent payments lists the latest payments that count, with the site, the bot, when and how much, whether or not a limit is set.

A page in another dollar or pound currency is counted as if it were in US dollars or pounds. That is more than it costs for nearly all of them; a Cayman Islands dollar is worth a little more than a US dollar, so a price in it counts a little less. A saved card pays whatever the shop charges, so the limit relies on the total the page shows; only a wallet’s single-use card holds the shop to the approved amount.

Per space

Approval settings are account defaults that every space follows. To give one space different rules, open its settings and choose Customize next to Approvals.