Approvals are the most important agent surface

For every team that has piloted Dench (or any agent platform, honestly), the moment of trust isn't the chat box — it's the first time the agent says "I'm about to email Meridian about the renewal, OK to proceed?" and someone clicks Approve.

If that moment doesn't exist, the agent isn't getting deployed. It's just a demo.

Three principles for designing the approval surface:

1. One queue. Not 12 channels. Approvals fragmented across Slack, email, and the app become 0 approvals.
2. Granular preferences. Some users want to be asked before every external email; others want full autonomy. The org-wide policy can have per-category toggles.
3. Auditable on the way out. Every approval should leave a trail with the exact tool call that fired, the diff, and who approved it. Compliance teams stop pushing back on rollouts when the audit lane is good.

Dench has shipped four versions of approvals in the last 18 months — each one more granular than the last. The current generation lets every workspace pick from ask, yolo, and a six-toggle policy that covers spending, publishing, secrets, shell risk, and external messages.