Verification and repair
Action audit and time-limited undo
An action audit and time-limited undo is a chronological record of what an agent did, with a reversal control on each entry and an explicit statement of when reversal stops being possible.
Control sits with the person
When to use it
Use it for every agent that writes to a system. Victor Yocco proposes an operating rule alongside it: if people reverse a given type of action more than roughly five percent of the time, turn the automation off for it.
What it prevents
Permanent loss of trust after a single unrecoverable error.
What the agent did3 actions
09:14Archived 38 threadsUndo, 6 days left
09:15Updated 12 recordsUndo, 40 min left
09:16Sent the summary to JaneCannot be undone
When undo stops being possible is stated, not discovered.
Where it is used
- Cursor, Claude Code and LangGraph: session snapshots, per-prompt checkpointing, and time travel over graph state
Sources
Related patterns: Action guard · Rationale grounded in precedent