Request waiting for approval

How you find out

The free plugin does not send email. A waiting request shows as a count beside Approvals in the RuleFence menu, and on the dashboard. If nobody looks, it expires unanswered — nothing runs, which is safe, but the agent is left waiting.

RuleFence Pro adds email alerts and approval routing, so the right person is told when something is waiting.

What you are shown

• Agent — which managed identity, in which environment.
• Ability — the exact registered name.
• Redacted input preview — the arguments, safe to read.
• Classification — action, risk, reversibility, scope, bulk, exposure.
• Target — what would be affected, and whether it is public-facing.
• Fingerprint — the digest this approval will be bound to.
• Expiry — when the request lapses, and the exact retry guidance if it does.

Where the Ability supports it, a preview of what the write would do is shown before it happens. Read that before anything else; it answers the real question more directly than the classification does.

What to ask

1. Is this consequence acceptable right now? Not in general — now, on this object, in this environment.
2. Does the input match the purpose? Compare it to the agent’s written purpose. A drafting agent asking to update a published page is worth a pause.
3. Is it reversible? If not, you are making a permanent decision on someone’s behalf.
4. Is anything about it unusual? Volume, timing, an unfamiliar target. Unusual is not wrong, but it is worth a question before it is worth an approval.

If you are not sure

Reject it. Rejection is not destructive: the agent can request again, and you will have the record of both the request and your decision. An expired or rejected request costs one retry; an approved one you did not understand can cost considerably more.

After you approve

The agent must retry. The approval authorizes one execution of the exact reviewed request; it does not trigger it. If the agent never retries, the approval expires and nothing happens — which is the correct outcome, not a fault.

Related guides

• ApprovalHow an approval works

  Approvals are input-bound, single-use and time-limited. Why an approval is a decision about one request rather than a standing permission.

• ApprovalReject or cancel a request

  The difference between rejecting a request and cancelling one, what each records, and why rejecting is cheap enough to be your default when unsure.

• ApprovalAn approval expired before it was used

  Expiry is a control, not a failure. Why approvals lapse, what the retry guidance tells the agent, and how to stop it happening on every run.