How Pending Approvals Work
What actually happens behind the scenes while an approval card is waiting for your decision.
When Auto mode is off and the agent wants to take a real action — sending something, or creating, updating, or deleting something in a connected app — the agent's current turn pauses right at that point. It doesn't keep going and it doesn't take the action yet; it waits for you to review the approval card and decide.
A Placeholder While It Waits
While the request is pending, the agent is quietly given a temporary placeholder result for the action it asked to take, just so its own reasoning stays coherent while it waits — the agent's train of thought treats the action as "in progress" rather than left hanging. The action itself doesn't actually run yet. It only really executes once you click Approve. If you click Decline instead, that placeholder is replaced with a record that the action was skipped, and it never runs.
Why a Reply Can Sound Like It's Already Done
Because the agent's reasoning already treated the action as underway before you decided, its next message after you approve can talk about the action as if it just happened — because at that point, it did. This is expected: the wording you see reflects the real outcome, it just wasn't final until your approval came in.
If you never respond, the request doesn't stay pending forever — it automatically expires after a set time limit and is treated the same as a decline.