# Control what your AI teammates can do (/ai-teammates/control)
Helio lets you control what your AI teammates do on their own and what waits for your sign-off. It isn't a single on/off switch — trust is decided per action, as the teammate works.
## How control works [#how-control-works]
Your teammate gets on with routine work — reading, searching, reasoning, drafting — without asking. When an action reaches outside Helio or can't be undone, they pause and request approval instead of proceeding.
When they pause, you either:
1. **Approve** — the teammate takes the action
2. **Deny** — the teammate stops and is told why
Lower-risk work runs on its own; higher-impact actions pause for you:
* **Read actions** — reading files, reading emails, searching the web → usually run on their own
* **Write actions** — editing files, sending internal messages, creating tasks
* **Sensitive actions** — sending external email, running code, calling external APIs
* **Irreversible actions** — deleting, publishing, deploying → pause for approval
## Where approvals appear [#where-approvals-appear]
When your teammate needs approval, the request shows up in two places — an approval card in the channel they're working in, and your [Inbox](/work/inbox). Each request shows:
* **Who** is asking and **what action** they want to take (for example, "Send email to [alex@example.com](mailto:alex@example.com)")
* **Why** — what they're trying to accomplish
You respond on the approval card in the teammate's channel; opening the request from the Inbox takes you to that card, and your decision syncs back everywhere. Choose **Approve** or **Deny** — denying tells the teammate you declined, so they can ask what to do instead.
## How trust carries forward [#how-trust-carries-forward]
Routine approvals are one-at-a-time by default: approving an action now doesn't grant blanket permission for that kind of action later. Standing, longer-lived trust applies in two narrow cases:
### Requests that carry a remember window [#requests-that-carry-a-remember-window]
Some approval requests come with a short remember window, and the card says so — for example, that the action will be remembered for a few minutes. Approve one of those and Helio skips re-asking for that exact action until the window runs out. The duration comes with the request; it isn't something you pick on the card.
### Requests to use a credential [#requests-to-use-a-credential]
If you publish a credential as **requestable** in the [Vault](/connect/vault), a teammate can request it and you **Approve** or **Deny** the request. The access policy — **trusted** (every fetch is allowed) or **one-time** (released once, then consumed) — comes with the request, not as a choice on the approval. (When you share a credential proactively, you pick the policy yourself.) You manage and revoke these grants from the credential's detail view in the Vault.
## Reviewing history [#reviewing-history]
Every reply in a teammate's channel or DM carries its work record inline — expand a reply's steps (**Show steps** on the message) to replay what they did on that turn: thinking, files read, edits made, commands run, with each step's status.
* **Task activity log** — each task's detail panel has its own log of everything that happened on that piece of work
* **Inbox** — shows a history of all approval requests (approved, denied, timed out); filter by teammate name
Each log entry includes a timestamp, the action type (e.g. "Sent email," "Edited file," "Ran command"), the specifics, and how it was authorized — autonomous, approved once, or always trusted.
If a teammate did something you don't want repeated, remember that routine actions are approved one at a time — there's no standing permission to undo. The one exception is access to a **Vault** credential you've shared, which you revoke from the credential's detail view in the [Vault](/connect/vault).