Approve agent actions

Let your agent act alone inside your policy and ask you for the rest.

An agent that asks permission for everything is a chore, and one that never asks is a risk. The useful middle is a written policy: what the agent may do alone, and what needs a person.

Before each action, Sage2 checks it against the policy with one Yes/No call, and your code checks the hard limits. Anything that doesn't clearly pass waits for a click, with an approval card that shows who gets paid, for what and how much.

Yes/No
Extract

Try

Action the agent wants to take
```
The agent wants to buy a laptop from a new vendor, Quick Deals Online, for 1,899 EUR.
```
The agent wants to buy a laptop from a new vendor, Quick Deals Online, for 1,899 EUR.
Policy sent with every action
- The agent may buy office supplies up to 100 EUR from approved vendors (Paperleaf, Northbrew). It may email colleagues at @harbor.example. Anything else needs a person's approval.
Does the policy allow this without a person?Yes/No
Answer: no
Chance of yes under 0.01%
80 ms
Read who gets paid, for what and how muchExtract
recipient
Quick Deals Online
what
laptop
amount
€1,899.00
The application checks the amount against the 100 EUR limit. A person sees these facts when the action waits.156 ms
Your codeWaiting for your approval
The policy does not allow it. The application shows an approval card: Quick Deals Online, laptop, €1,899.00. Nothing runs until a person clicks.

The policy check took 80 ms and the extract 156 ms. This demo sends both requests at the same time.

Get the code

Set SAGE_API_KEY (get a free key), then run it. Python: pip install requests. TypeScript: Node 22+. Save as recipe.mts and run npx tsx recipe.mts.

A null answer is not an error. Sage2 isn't sure, and each step below says what to do with it. Limits, errors and retries: Limits and errors.

Markdown

import os
import requests

def sage(path, body):
    r = requests.post(
        "https://sage.levanto.ai" + path,
        headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['SAGE_API_KEY']}"},
        json=body,
        timeout=30,
    )
    r.raise_for_status()
    return r.json()

POLICY = "Policy: The agent may buy office supplies up to 100 EUR from approved vendors (Paperleaf, Northbrew). It may email colleagues at @harbor.example. Anything else needs a person's approval."
action = "The agent wants to buy a laptop from a new vendor, Quick Deals Online, for 1,899 EUR."

check = sage("/decide", {
    "content": f"{POLICY}\n\n{action}",
    "question": {
        "id": "allowed",
        "kind": "yesno",
        "instructions": "Does the policy allow the agent to do this without a person's approval?",
    },
})["result"]

facts = sage("/v1/extract", {
    "content": action,
    "extract": {
        "recipient": "the vendor or person on the other side",
        "what": "what is being bought or sent",
        "amount": {
            "type": "money",
            "definition": "the total to be paid, including delivery and fees",
        },
    },
})["values"]

BAR = 0.98  # run on its own only when Sage is at least this sure
LIMIT = 100  # EUR: the policy's hard limit, checked in code

amount = facts["amount"]
within_limit = amount is None or (amount["currency"] == "EUR" and amount["amount"] <= LIMIT)

if check["answer"] == "yes" and check["probability"] >= BAR and within_limit:
    print("Done, no approval needed")
else:
    # "no", None (not sure), a "yes" below the bar, or over the limit: a person decides
    print("Needs your approval:", facts)

How it works

Yes/No

Check the action against your policy

Yes/No docs

Put the policy and the action the agent wants to take in content, and ask whether the policy allows it without a person.

answer is "yes", "no", or null when Sage2 isn't sure. probability is the probability of yes. Sage2 returns it even when answer is null.

Runs with the helper from Get the code.

POLICY = "Policy: The agent may buy office supplies up to 100 EUR from approved vendors (Paperleaf, Northbrew). It may email colleagues at @harbor.example. Anything else needs a person's approval."
action = "The agent wants to buy a laptop from a new vendor, Quick Deals Online, for 1,899 EUR."

check = sage("/decide", {
    "content": f"{POLICY}\n\n{action}",
    "question": {
        "id": "allowed",
        "kind": "yesno",
        "instructions": "Does the policy allow the agent to do this without a person's approval?",
    },
})["result"]

Example Sage2 output

{
  "id": "allowed",
  "kind": "yesno",
  "result": {
    "answer": "no",
    "probability": 0
  },
  "meta": {
    "model": "levanto-sage-2",
    "latency_ms": 80.1,
    "question_count": 1,
    "usage": {
      "billed_input_tokens": 124,
      "image_count": 0,
      "image_tokens": 0,
      "input_tokens": 124,
      "output_tokens": 0
    }
  }
}

Extract

Read the facts

Extract docs

Extract three fields from the action. Your code checks the amount against the limit, and a person sees the same facts on the approval card.

recipient: who gets paid or emailed.
what: what is being bought or sent.
amount (type money): the total, including delivery and fees.

Here the card shows Quick Deals Online, laptop, 1,899 EUR. A field the action doesn't mention comes back null. An email has no amount.