> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://aidocs.ethanbragdon.icu/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Approvals & Memory

> Understand Starfire AI approval gates, human oversight, persistent memory, and automation boundaries.

# Approvals & memory

Approvals and memory solve two different problems in Starfire automation:

* **Approvals** decide whether a workflow may cross a sensitive boundary.
* **Memory** lets useful context persist beyond one execution.

Keeping those concepts separate is important. Remembering a preference does not authorize an action.

## Approval gates

A workflow can pause before a sensitive step and wait for an authorized person to approve or reject it.

Examples of actions that may warrant approval include:

* publishing or deploying output
* changing important account or organization configuration
* spending beyond a configured budget
* destructive file operations
* acting through a connected external service
* other actions defined as sensitive by the workflow or organization

A useful approval record can include:

```text theme={null}
Requested action
Requester / workflow
Target resource
Reason
Expected impact
Approver
Decision
Timestamp
```

## Approval outcomes

An approval gate should have explicit outcomes such as approved, rejected, expired, or cancelled. A workflow should not silently treat a missing response as approval.

## Memory

Memory is persistent context that can help Starfire avoid relearning stable information every time.

Potential memory scopes include:

* personal
* project
* organization
* agent-specific

Scope matters because information useful in one context may be inappropriate or misleading in another.

## Memory vs Knowledge

**Memory** is compact persistent context about preferences, decisions, or ongoing state.

**Knowledge** is a larger retrieval system for documents, repositories, and indexed source material.

They can work together but are not interchangeable.

## Memory vs permissions

A stored memory cannot grant itself access. Runtime authorization still comes from account, organization, project, integration, and administrator policy.

<Warning>
  Never use persistent memory as a place to store passwords, API secrets, private keys, or other credentials. Secrets belong in the platform's dedicated credential/integration systems.
</Warning>

## Status

Approval and memory foundations are part of the NEXUS-era backend expansion. Individual UI surfaces and workflow integrations can be staged separately during Alpha rollout.