Approving Agent Changes
Every change an agent, Ask Muin or Claude wants to make to your records is shown to you first and runs only when you approve it. How previews, Approve all, standing rules, Undo, backup approvers and expiry work.
An agent can read your records and work out what should happen next. It cannot change anything until a person approves. Every change it proposes waits for you as a preview, and nothing is written until you approve it.
This applies to every AI that works in Muin: the agents in the library, agents you build yourself, an agent step inside a workflow, Ask Muin, and Claude or any other AI app you connect to Muin.
What counts as a change
A change is anything that edits a business record, or sends, posts, pays or files something outside Muin. Examples: updating a vendor’s details, creating a task for someone, asking a volunteer about their expense claim, sending a message.
These are not changes, so they never wait: an agent reading your records, its findings, its drafts and its own run notes. The plain steps of a workflow you published run as published; publishing the workflow was the approval.
What a preview shows
Each proposed change is one preview. It shows:
| Field | What it says |
|---|---|
| What | The action, in plain words |
| Record | The record it would change, with a link to open it |
| Changes | Each field, from its current value to the new one |
| Message | The text that would be sent, when the change sends something |
| Amount | The amount, when money is involved |
| Sent to | Who would receive it |
| Expires | When the preview stops waiting |
Where previews appear
In Ask Muin. When you ask Muin to do something that changes a record, the answer is a preview card: “Check this before Muin makes the change. Nothing changes until you approve.” Click Approve, Edit or Cancel. When one request makes several changes, the card reads “Muin wants to make 3 changes” and you can reject single rows with Reject or keep them with Keep this one. A preview you leave undecided in chat also waits in your Inbox.
In your Inbox. Changes from agents that ran on a schedule or on an event, and from connected AI apps, wait in Inbox under Waiting for your approval, grouped by agent: “Expense Reviewer wants to make 4 changes (from 2 runs, oldest 3 hours ago)”. Click Review to open the rows. To see only these, choose Agent changes in the category filter.
On your phone. The Muin Go app sends one notification for each run that is waiting, naming the agent and the record. A payment always opens for review; it is never approved from the notification.
While a run waits for you, the run page shows it as waiting, and no other work is held up.
Approve, edit or reject
- Approve. “Approve this change?” The change runs as soon as you approve. The agent’s run then finishes with the result.
- Edit. Change a value and click Make a new preview. “Saving makes a new preview for you to check. Nothing changes until you approve it.” The old preview can no longer be approved.
- Reject. Give a reason. The run ends with it, for example: Rejected by Sarah Ahmed: “Wrong vendor”. Nothing was changed.
You can only approve a change you have permission to make yourself. If you don’t, the preview says “You can’t approve this change. It needs permission to …” and names the permission. Ask an owner to add it to your role.
Approve all
When one agent proposes several changes, select the rows you want and click Approve all. Muin first lists what will run: “Approve 4 changes from Expense Reviewer?” Rows you rejected do not run. Afterwards it reports the outcome, for example “3 changes made, 1 rejected.”
Standing rules
Some changes are small and routine, and you would approve them every time. A standing rule is your approval in advance for one kind of change.
Set one in Settings > Approvals with Changes agents propose:
- Choose Which changes this rule approves.
- Choose which agents it covers: a run a person started (this also covers Ask Muin and connected AI apps such as Claude), an unattended automation (a scheduled or event run), or both.
- Save. Changes the rule approves run without asking you and are recorded with the rule’s name.
Three limits always hold:
- Only a person creates or changes a rule. No agent, no Ask Muin conversation and no connected AI app can create or edit one.
- Money always asks. “Payments, payouts, refunds and invoice approvals always need a person to approve, because they pay or commit your organization to pay. A rule can’t cover them.” Muin refuses to save a rule that would approve a payment or approve or submit an invoice.
- A rule must be specific. It has to name the changes and the agents it covers. A rule that named neither would approve everything, so Muin refuses it.
If you also set Most a single change can be, the rule approves only changes that carry an amount at or under that limit. A change with no amount, such as a question or a task, is not covered by a rule with a limit.
Daily review and Undo
Every change a standing rule approved shows up the next day. Your daily briefing says “Yesterday your standing rules approved 3 changes” with a Review link to Inbox > Audit, filtered by the Approved by your rules chip.
Each row there names the rule. Click Undo to put the record back the way it was. Undo works only when it is safe:
- Only for a change a rule approved. A change you approved yourself was your own decision.
- Only by the person the rule acted for, or an admin.
- Only for a change that can be reversed. A message that was sent, a change in another system and money that moved cannot be undone, and Muin tells you why.
- Never over someone’s later edit. If the record changed after the rule-approved change, Muin changes nothing and asks you to fix it by hand.
- Once. A second Undo is refused.
Who approves an agent’s changes
An agent’s owner is the person who turned it on. The agent can only see and change what its owner can, and its changes wait in the owner’s Inbox.
On the agent’s Alerts tab, the Who approves this agent’s changes block shows the owner and lets anyone who can edit the agent name a Backup approver, someone other than the owner:
- If the owner hasn’t answered in 48 hours, the change goes to the backup.
- After another 48 hours it goes to an admin.
- Someone who lacks the permission the change needs is skipped.
The Inbox row then says “Escalated: the owner did not answer in 48 hours, so it came to you.”
If the owner leaves the workspace or loses access, the agent’s runs stop, its waiting changes are withdrawn, and the workspace admins are told so they can turn it back on.
When nobody answers
On the same block, Waiting changes expire after is 3, 7 or 14 days. The default is 7. When a change expires, the run stops and nothing changes: “Expired: nobody approved within 7 days. Nothing was changed.” The owner is told.
Claude and other connected AI apps
When Claude, or another AI app connected to Muin, asks to change a record, Muin returns a preview and stores the change in your Inbox. Muin tells Claude: “This change is waiting for your approval in Muin (Inbox). It runs only after you approve it there.”
The change runs only when you approve it in Muin, on the web or in the Muin Go app. Nothing Claude sends counts as approval: not a second call, not a token, and not an “accept” you click inside Claude. If Claude calls the same tool again, Muin answers with the change’s status instead of running it. A standing rule that covers runs a person started covers Claude’s changes too, and never a payment.
What is recorded
Every change an AI proposes, and every one that runs, is recorded in the audit log: which agent or app, who it acted for, who approved it or which rule did, and the outcome. The record keeps a fingerprint of the change’s details rather than the details themselves, and run traces carry no prompt text or customer data.
When it goes wrong
| What you see | Why | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| “You can’t approve this change. It needs permission to …” | Your role does not include the permission the change needs | Ask an owner to add it to your role, or leave it for someone who has it |
| “This preview expired. Ask again for a new one.” | Nobody decided in time | Ask Muin again, or run the agent again |
| “Not done: … Nothing was changed.” | The record moved on since the preview was made, or the change failed | Open the record, then edit the change or ask again |
| Undo says the change cannot be undone | It sent a message, changed another system or moved money | Correct it by hand in the place it went |
| Undo says the record changed since | Someone edited the record after the rule-approved change | Fix the record by hand |
| A rule will not save | It names a payment or an invoice approval, names no changes, or names no agents | Remove payments and invoice approvals, and choose the changes and agents it covers |
Next step
- Unified Inbox - where waiting changes and the Audit tab live.
- Turning On an Agent and Reading Its Runs - the Alerts tab and run states.
- Connect Muin to Claude - what Claude can read and change.