A soft-commit window is a built-in pause on actions that cannot easily be undone. When the agent decides to take an irreversible step, such as moving money or sending a binding notice, it does not fire instantly. It schedules the action and opens a short window during which you can see it queued and cancel it. If the window closes without intervention, the action commits. Think of it as the 'undo send' delay applied to the operations of a building.
The window exists because autonomy and reversibility are in tension: the more an agent does on its own, the more important it is that a human can catch a mistake before it becomes permanent. Paired with a kill switch that pauses all autonomy and voids anything still inside its safety window, the soft-commit delay turns 'the agent did something wrong' from an emergency into a routine interception. It is a safety mechanism, not a bottleneck, and most in-bounds actions pass through untouched.
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Related terms
AI & autonomy
Bounded autonomy
An approach where an AI agent acts on its own only within limits you set, per-task spend and approval thresholds, and asks for a human decision above them.
AI & autonomy
Approval queue
A single prioritized list where an autonomous system shows what it has already handled and the short list of decisions that still need a human to approve or deny.
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