# Agent approval design worksheet

Version 1, October 20, 2026. Planning aid for one workflow. Fill in unknowns; this worksheet does not establish that a control is deployed or effective.

## 1. Define the action
- Workflow and accountable owner:
- Agent identity and credential scope:
- Exact operation, target and environment:
- Parameters the reviewer must see (amount/currency, recipient, commit, resource IDs):
- Expected benefit and consequence of an incorrect action:

## 2. Route the decision
- Routine actions policy may allow automatically:
- Actions requiring a designated human:
- Prohibited actions:
- Named approver or authorized role:
- How the application authenticates that person and checks their authority:
- Delegate/escalation route and separation-of-duties requirement:

## 3. Bind approval to execution
- Where enforcement runs before the protected effect:
- How every credential/path capable of the effect reaches that control:
- How the approved proposal and final parameters are compared:
- What changes invalidate approval:
- Approval deadline and behavior when time expires:
- Rejection and cancellation behavior:
- Durable pending-state location and recovery owner:
- Duplicate/concurrent decision handling:
- Effect idempotency key and downstream retry behavior:
- Recovery when the effect succeeds but recording its result fails:

## 4. Keep distinct evidence
- Request record: exact proposed action and version:
- Decision record: authorized reviewer, decision, policy and time:
- Signature verification: issuer, key, covered fields and verification method, if used:
- Execution record: attempted action, downstream result and correlation ID:
- Who can change or delete each record:
- Retention, access and sensitive-field handling:
- Claims these records do not prove:

## 5. Verify with synthetic actions
Record command, version, actual outcome and evidence location for each. Leave untested cases marked `not tested`.

| Case | Expected behavior | Actual result / evidence |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Valid approval | Approved unchanged action can proceed | not tested |
| Rejection | Protected action does not run | not tested |
| Parameters change | Existing approval cannot authorize changed action | not tested |
| Approval expires | Expired approval cannot authorize execution | not tested |
| Duplicate retry | Effect is not repeated unintentionally | not tested |
| Process restart | Pending state and decision binding remain consistent | not tested |
| Concurrent decisions | One decision is consumed consistently | not tested |
| Wrong approver | Unauthorized caller cannot approve | not tested |

## Next step
Choose the first unresolved control and its owner. Compare native framework capabilities with the requirement before adding another component. A request for Permission Protocol early access registers interest; compatibility and delivery must be confirmed for the workflow.