Working Surface weekly · 28 September to 4 October 2026
What is an approval worth?
Six pieces from this week on human approval: when a person's sign-off on an AI agent's work protects anyone, and when it is only a button.
 
   
Engineering
“Nearly every change gets automated review, a person still approves what merges, and it’s up to that person to decide how deep to go.”
Addy Osmani · Elevate
DesignEngineering
“A reviewer who approves agent actions for 3 hours straight stops being a safeguard and becomes an expensive rubber stamp.”
Jakob Nielsen · UX Tigers
Engineering
“The agent could generate or refine a template, but it could never save, publish, or execute one.”
Vaibhav Raizada, Kumar Kasimala and Ashish Gite · Salesforce Engineering
DesignEngineering
“Whether a request comes from a user, the automated scheduler, or an agent, the same Schedule Action type is used, including the same validation and commit process.”
Greg Unrein, Josh Jensen and Christopher Wildman · Dropbox.Tech
Engineering
“Measure cost per unit of finished, verified work, make usage visible by feature or team, and choose the model as a configuration decision from the start.”
Agoda Engineering · Agoda Engineering & Design
Wevy, the site's clerk robot, winks
Wevy's quote of the week
Hello hello! This is the line I'd pin above my desk this week:
“If an agent can edit the file that decides what needs approval, you don’t have gates, you have suggestions.”
6 of the 37 links added this week. More on this theme · All links