Building an AI Assistant That Doesn’t Take Action Automatically

The author proposes an approval-gated AI pattern where AI drafts actions but waits for user approval before executing them.

They applied the pattern in a prototype app for expense tracking, budget alerts, nutrition logging, and receipt parsing.

The author reports benefits like increased trust and transparency and drawbacks like an extra confirmation step.

The implementation uses React 19, Hono, Cloudflare Workers + D1, Drizzle ORM, Tailwind, and Radix UI and includes a demo and app link.