Granting authority
The user has to decide how much the agent may do on its own, and the system has to enforce that decision per action, not per session.
Gate everything and you get rubber-stamping, which is worse than no gate. Gate nothing and one bad step is unrecoverable. Price each gate by reversibility and blast radius, and let autonomy be earned.
4 patterns for this moment
Each one is a different way to resolve the tradeoff above.
An explicit spectrum from suggest-only to review-after, set by the user rather than assumed by the product.
The agent pauses before a consequential step and presents a decision-ready packet to a human.
A visible inventory of the tools, data and destinations the agent may touch, editable by the user.
A always-present stop that halts the run, states what already happened, and offers to undo it.
Audit checklist for this moment
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