Connect and stay in control

What should AI be allowed to do without asking?

Decide, action by action, what an AI assistant or automation may do on its own, what it may do inside an approved scope, and what always waits for a person.

For: Owners and managers who want the benefit of AI or automation without losing control of money, customers and records.

Format: Guide + permissions decision worksheet
Published: September 9, 2026
Last checked: September 9, 2026
Written by: Dryvn AI editorial
Edited by: Dryvn AI editorial
Reviewed by: Not yet reviewed by a named person
Read as: Editorial (Dryvn's practical method)

The question underneath the worry

When an owner tells us they are nervous about AI, it is rarely about the technology. It is about authority. Who decided that message could go out? Who agreed to that price? Who deleted that record? Those are the same questions they ask about a new employee, and they deserve the same answer: a clear description of what the person, or the system, may do on its own.

For the wider argument behind enforceable authority, see the founder research paper The AI Fabric: loops, graphs and everyday coordination.

So this guide treats an AI assistant, an agent or an automation the way you would treat someone new on the team. It gets no authority it hasn't been given in writing. Anthropic's engineering guidance draws a useful line here: a workflow follows steps you defined in advance, while an agent decides its own steps and which tools to use as it goes [S11]. The more a system decides for itself, the more precisely you need to say what it may act on.

Six kinds of action, and where each usually lands

Before you can set boundaries, you need to name what the system is actually doing. Almost everything an assistant or automation does falls into one of six kinds of action. They are not equally risky, and the risk is not about how small the action looks.

Action types with a typical example and a sensible default category
Action type	Example	Default category	Why
Reading	Summarize this week's open requests.	Assistance only	Nothing changes. The only risk is what data it can see, which is a separate permission.
Drafting	Write a reply to this customer for me to check.	Assistance only	A draft has no effect until a person sends it.
Updating records	Change the job status to 'scheduled'.	Approved scope	Wrong updates are recoverable, but only if you notice. Allow it for fields you have named, with a log.
Contacting people	Text the customer the new appointment time.	Approved scope, narrow	A message cannot be unsent. Allow specific message types to specific recipients, with stop conditions.
Committing money	Refund the deposit. Approve the supplier invoice.	Specific human approval	Money leaving, prices and terms are decisions, not tasks.
Deleting data	Remove the duplicate customer records.	Specific human approval	Deletion is rarely urgent and rarely reversible. Prefer archive over delete.

The three categories

01Assistance onlyThe system reads, summarizes, drafts and suggests. A person does everything that has an effect on the world. This is the right starting point for any new use, and for anything that touches money, contracts or complaints.
02Action within an explicitly approved scopeThe system may act on its own, but only inside limits you wrote down: which records, which fields, which recipients, which amounts, which hours, how often. Anything outside the limits is proposed, not performed. Most useful automation lives here.
03Specific human approvalThe system prepares the action and a named person approves each one before it happens. Use this for money leaving, pricing, commitments to customers, anything legal, and deletion. If approvals pile up, the fix is a tighter scope for the routine cases, not a blanket yes.

Notice that the categories are about the action, not the tool. The same assistant might be assistance-only for pricing, approved-scope for appointment confirmations, and require specific approval for refunds. That is normal. It is also why a single on/off switch for 'the AI' is never enough.

What every permission needs

A permission is more than a yes. It is a small agreement with five parts. Leave one out and you will find out which one the first time something goes wrong.

An owner. One named person who granted the permission and answers for it. Not 'the office'.
Permitted data and limits. Which records, which fields, which recipients, what amounts, what hours, how many times a day. Write the number.
An exception route. Where an item goes when it falls outside the limits, and who looks at it. Without this, the system either stops silently or guesses.
Evidence. A log of what was done, to whom, and when, that a person can read without technical help.
A way to revoke it. How the permission is switched off, who can do it, and how fast. If you cannot answer this in one sentence, do not grant the permission yet.

Illustrative example · fictional

A bookkeeping and admin service deciding what its assistant may send

A fictional two-person bookkeeping service handles month-end for thirty small clients. The owner wants an assistant to reduce the chasing: clients forget to send receipts, and the assistant could remind them. She sits down with the six action types and sorts what she actually wants it to do.

Her first pass
Action	Category	Limits she wrote	Revoke
Read the client folder to list missing receipts	Assistance only	Read access to the current month's folder only.	Remove folder access.
Draft the reminder email	Assistance only	Draft goes to her inbox, not the client.	Not needed; nothing is sent.
Send the first monthly reminder	Approved scope	Only clients flagged 'reminders OK'; only the standard wording; once per month, weekdays 9 to 5; stops if the client replies.	One setting she can switch off; she tested that it works.
Send a second reminder	Specific human approval	She approves each second reminder after reading the thread.	Same switch.
Tell a client their books are 'complete'	Specific human approval	Never automated. She signs off every month-end herself.	Not granted.
Delete duplicate transactions	Not granted	The assistant may flag duplicates; she deletes.	Not applicable.

Two things stand out. She kept 'books complete' under specific approval even though it is just a message, because it is a promise. And she did not grant deletion at all; flagging duplicates gives her most of the benefit with none of the risk. After three months of clean logs she might widen the reminder scope. That is how permissions should grow: from evidence, not from confidence.

Fill in the worksheet

Work through one action at a time. If you cannot fill in the owner, the limits and the revoke column, the honest category is assistance only until you can. Print it, or copy it as text, and keep it where the people who use the system can see it.

Worksheet

Permissions decision worksheet

One row of this sheet per action. Start with the actions the system already does today.

Action: One specific thing the system does, e.g. 'send appointment confirmation by text'
Category: Assistance only / Approved scope / Specific human approval
Owner: The named person who granted this and answers for it
Permitted data: Which records and fields it may use
Limits: Recipients, amounts, hours, frequency, stop conditions
Exception route: Where out-of-scope items go and who reviews them
Evidence: What is logged and where a person can read it
How permission is revoked: The switch, who can flip it, how fast

Downloads · no email required

Permissions decision worksheet
Blank worksheet with the eight fields per action, short instructions, and a separate fictional example. Opens in any text or Markdown editor.
Download .md

Keeping it honest over time

01Start narrower than you think you needWiden a scope after you have read the evidence, not before. A narrow scope that works teaches you more than a wide one that mostly works.
02Review the exception route monthlyThe items that fell outside the limits tell you whether the limits are right. A pile of exceptions means the scope is too tight or the process is unclear.
03Test the revoke switch before you need itTurn it off once on purpose and confirm the action stops. A revoke you have never tested is a hope.
04Re-run the worksheet when the tool changesNew features arrive with new default permissions. Your categories should not change just because a menu did.

Questions people ask

How do I decide which automated actions need human approval?: Ask three things about the action: can it be undone, does it commit the business to something, and can it repeat without anyone noticing. If the answer to any of those is uncomfortable, it needs specific approval or a tightly written scope. Size is not the test.
Isn't approving everything by hand the same as not automating?: For money and commitments, yes, and that is fine. The gain comes from the approved-scope category: routine, bounded actions with stop conditions and a log. Get those right and the approval queue shrinks to the decisions that deserve a person.
Does this apply to ordinary automation, not just AI?: Yes. A rule that sends an invoice reminder is committing your business to a message. It needs the same owner, limits and revoke switch as an AI assistant would. The tool categories guide explains the difference between them.
Where should I start if the system already has permissions I never reviewed?: List what it does today, sort each action into a category, and pull anything that touches money, contacts or deletion back to specific approval until you have written its scope. The handoff assessment helps find which pieces of work to look at first.

What should I automate first in a small business?Compare recurring work on six practical measures, sort each task into the right lane, and pick one bounded experiment with a baseline.
Connect the software you already use: a handoff checklistPlan a connection between two tools you already run so that records move once, in the right direction, with an owner, a failure route and a way to check it worked.
AI assistant, automation, agent or business software: which do you need?Tell the four categories apart by the job each one does, and pick the right one for a specific task in your business, including the case where what you already own is enough.
Where is work getting stuck between your tools?Find the handoffs in your business that still depend on copying information, remembering follow-ups or chasing people, and get one next action for each gap.
BlogWhat’s Your Differentiator? The Question That Made Me Rethink DryvnI am not trying to build another dashboard that gives a business owner more information to monitor. I am building Dryvn toward a harder outcome: reducing the daily effort of coordinating the business, including the effort of operating the software itself.
BlogWhy Is AI Adoption in Construction Still So Low?Construction does not have an information shortage. It has a fit problem. Most AI tools start with writing and analysis. Trades businesses need information to survive messy field input, connect to the right job, move through approved steps and come back when the outcome is still unfinished.

Sources

Dates are when each source was last checked by the editor. Sources support specific claims; they are not endorsements.

S11Building Effective AI Agents · Anthropic · checked September 9, 2026Used for the distinction between a predefined workflow and an agent that directs its own steps and tools, and for the recommendation to keep systems as simple as the task allows. Not a source on Dryvn internals.

R09 · Published September 9, 2026 · Next scheduled review December 9, 2026 · Teaches process management; not legal, warranty, safety or engineering advice. Examples are fictional unless stated. Part of the Dryvn resource library (17 resources).