Approval gate (dry run)

What it is

If the assistant only reads data, the cost of a mistake is a wrong sentence. The moment it can pause campaigns and move budgets, a mistake touches money the same day. The approval gate is the human control between intent and execution; it has two parts: the dry-run preview that shows the change without applying it, and the user's explicit confirmation.

What makes the gate useful is the quality of the preview. “I will update your budget” is not a preview. “Brand Search campaign, daily budget $400 → $600, +50%, effective immediately” is: which account, which object, current value, new value, direction and size of the change.

Why it matters

Vague previews train people to approve without reading, which is worse than having no gate at all. A good gate comes with a few companions: a cap on how much a single change can move, scoping to the accounts you selected, an audit log that says who approved what and when, and reversibility.

One technical distinction matters: a client-side “always allow this tool” setting can skip the confirmation step. A gate enforced on the server is stronger, because the server will not act until explicit approval arrives, whatever the client setting.

How Tecrube uses it

In Tecrube every write action passes through the server-side approval gate: creating and pausing campaigns, budgets and bids, keywords and negatives, audiences, creatives, conversion actions. The full change is previewed first; it is applied when you approve.

Any single budget increase above 50% is rejected outright. Every applied change is written to the audit log. Read and reporting requests run instantly; the friction sits only where the risk is, on the write side.

Example

When you say “pause the three losing ad groups”, the assistant returns a three-line preview: account, campaign, ad group, current status → paused. Nothing changes until you type “approve”; afterwards all three lines appear in the audit log.