# Safety and approvals How the one safety switch works in detail, what the three answers mean, which words count as risky, and what never asks. Silan has one safety switch, **Ask me before paying, sending, posting or deleting**, in **Settings › Safety**. This page is the detail behind it: when an ask fires, what the answers cover, what the agent may never type, and what happens to the phone while it waits. The [safety overview](/safety/) is the short version. ## What it does An ask fires when the agent, a run or a connected app is about to tap something whose words mean pay, send, post or delete. Silan reads the button's words in seven languages, and treats a bare price, **Donate** and **Free Trial** as paying, and **Discard**, **Erase**, **Move to Trash** and **Clear History** as deleting. The ask shows up as a card in the chat and as a notice. | Answer | What it covers | | --- | --- | | **Just this once** | This one tap. | | **For this chat** | Every ask from this app for the rest of the chat. In a run it reads **For this task**. | | ** for 1 hour** | Every ask from this app for an hour, in any chat. Not offered for installing an app. | What you allowed shows in **Settings › Safety › Allowed for now** with **Remove** on each line. A connected app's own ask to use Silan has no **Just this once**. While an ask waits, the phone is free. Another task or a person can use it in the meantime, and the ask expires after 5 minutes. If the screen changed before you said yes, the tap is refused with `STALE_ELEMENT` and nothing is sent. Some things never ask and some are always refused: - Taps on a tab bar never ask. - Typing into a search box and submitting it never asks. Submitting any other box asks under the send rule. - Typing into a password box is refused for the agent, a run and a connected app. Only the person may, and the [Vault](/features/vault/) fills passwords without showing them. - A connected app cannot read or change the safety settings. Its calls get `FORBIDDEN`. Stop Everything, Control Option Command Period, stops every action on every device and holds every task and run. It is described on the [control page](/features/control/). ## Step by step 1. Leave the switch on in **Settings › Safety**. It is on from the first start. 2. When a card appears in the chat, read the button's words and the picture under it. 3. Pick **Just this once**, **For this chat** or ** for 1 hour**. 4. To take an hour back, open **Settings › Safety › Allowed for now** and click **Remove**. 5. Turn the switch off only on a phone that holds nothing of yours. Then the agent taps without asking. From an agent, an ask arrives as `APPROVAL_REQUIRED` over MCP and as a `202` with the approval in the body over REST. The agent waits on `get_approval` and tries the tap again after your yes. See [get-approval](/reference/mcp/get-approval/) and the [safety REST group](/reference/rest/safety/). ## Limits - The switch is one switch. There is no per-app or per-word setting. - The risky-tap ask with the switch on, **For this chat**, the field-kind rules, tab taps, amounts on the ask card and the ask words in each language were proved with no device or from recorded screens. Not yet proved on a real device. - An approval given to a connected app covers that app's calls, not the person's own taps. ## Proof :::note[Proof] Proved on an iPhone 11 (iOS 27) on a cable, 14 Oct 2026, by a Silan worker: the hour answer, Remove in Allowed for now and the never-ask answer, run `20261014-164529-29961`. The phone free during an ask, a tap by another caller in 0.94 s, 31 Oct 2026, run `20261031-043534-63292`. The switch off makes an MCP launch pass with no ask, 29 Oct 2026, runs `20261029-171313-79435` with no device and `20261029-171841-17349`. A late yes after 40 s still sent, run `20261014-152736-62522`. Source: verify-silan feature map, safety, agent-tasks and control. :::

The agent stops at an ask card before it opens a new app. After Approve it goes on (recorded 41 s).

Settings, Safety: the Ask me first switch and the Stop everything keys.