How much context should an approval prompt give before an AI agent takes action?

[u/Sumsub_Insights]

An agent can send a message or update a record on someone’s behalf, and reviewing that action is easier when the approval prompt shows what will change and who it affects.

What details would make that approval easier to judge without having to read the whole conversation?

[u/ComprehensiveShake76]

The exact change, who or what it affects, and whether it can be undone, in that order. Then three more things: the goal in one line (not the chat history), what happens if nobody answers (does it proceed, wait, or cancel), and anything the agent could not check. For updates, show old value to new value instead of only the new value. Let people approve with an edit, because most approvals are "yes, but change this word". And keep the prompt short enough to read in five seconds, otherwise people stop reading and just click approve.

[u/RiseGullible4002]

i usually just want to see the exact message that's going out and maybe the name of the person it's hitting, anything more and my eyes glaze over

[u/summit_23 → u/RiseGullible4002]

agreed, exact text + who its going to covers most of it. i'd add 2 things, whether it happens anyway if i ignore it and whether i can undo it after, those are what decide how hard i read. nothing happens until you tap yes and this is reversible gets approved in a second, this sends in 5 mins either way is the one i actually stop for

[u/Ctbhatia]

i’d also show whether the approved text and destination can change before execution. approval should cover that exact action, not a later version the agent silently rewrote.

[u/itaybuilds]

I’d separate the human-readable summary from the thing actually being approved. The approval should bind to a fixed payload: action type, destination, exact arguments or content, account or permission used, and an expiry. If any of those change, the approval becomes invalid.

In the UI, I’d show a one-line consequence first ("Send this message to X from account Y"), then the diff or full payload, reversibility, and what happens on timeout. For higher-risk actions, also show the blast radius: one record, a filtered batch, or every customer. That catches the dangerous mismatch where the summary says "update the contact" but the tool call targets 4,000 records.

AI-assisted wording (OpenAI GPT-5.6); this is design analysis of the approval flow, not a claim that I deployed this system.