Glossary
Audit Trail
A record of inputs, decisions, tool calls, approvals, and results.
Related guide: AI Agent Safety Terms in Market Tools. Updated 2026-09-17.
Audit Trail in context
An audit trail connects a request with the events that followed it. A final 'done' message loses the distinction between an attempt, an authorization decision, and a verified result. Useful records preserve those distinctions without copying secrets into logs.
Important boundary
Logging explains what happened but does not prevent an unsafe action by itself.
A recorded error is not always a failed external action, and a model's success message is not proof of completion. The evidence needs to identify which system observed which outcome.
Worked example
A timeout leaves an unknown outcome, not a proven failure
A fictional publishing worker receives request R17 for draft version 3. Its records show the draft identifier, approval identifier, destination, and send attempt. The remote service times out before returning a result. The local log says 'timeout'; it does not establish whether the remote service accepted the post.
Before retrying, the operator checks the remote result using the request identifier where supported. A matching published post establishes completion. No matching record may require further investigation rather than an immediate claim that nothing happened. A blind retry could produce two posts if the first attempt succeeded but its response was lost.
For this exercise, a useful timeline keeps requested, approved, attempted, and confirmed as separate events. Store references to the draft and approval, not passwords or access tokens. A log can help reconstruct the incident, but it cannot retroactively prevent a duplicate or prove that every unrecorded event was harmless.
Continue in the guide
Designing an agent that can research but cannot silently trade
Read the complete applied scenarioKnowledge check
Check the distinction
The send attempt timed out, and no remote result has been checked. Should the status be 'definitely not published'?
No. The confirmed fact is that the caller did not receive a timely result. Publication remains unknown until independent evidence resolves it. Preserve that uncertainty in the record.
Source trail
Check the source or calculation
Background for event attributes, correlation, and sensitive data exclusions. R17 and the timeout sequence are our fictional exercise, not a claim about a particular publishing service.