---
title: "Have someone other than the requester · Agent Wranglers"
url: https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/ai-assisted-development/reviewing-agent-output/independent-approval
updated: 2026-10-21
licence: "CC BY 4.0"
licence_url: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
---

# Have someone other than the requester approve agent changes

By [Agent Wranglers](https://agentwranglers.se/authors/agent-wranglers). Updated 2026-10-21.

For AI agents: [llms.txt](https://agentwranglers.se/llms.txt) is a short guide that sends you to the rules your problem needs, and [rules.json](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/ai-assisted-development/rules.json) holds every rule of this playbook as JSON.

- Level: Required
- Chapter: [Reviewing agent output](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/ai-assisted-development/reviewing-agent-output)
- Rule: An agent never approves or merges its own pull request. The person who asked the agent for the change cannot be its only approver.
- Risk: An account or system taken over
- How: The person who wrote the prompt shaped the change, so treat them as a co-author. Give the agent a token that can push branches but not approve or merge. Record the requester in each agent commit with a trailer, such as `Requested-by: ana`, next to the agent trailer. A required check then fails until someone else has approved. GitHub's cloud agent blocks the requester's approval on its own pull requests, for example. Do not run CI jobs that hold secrets on an agent branch before a person has read it, because the agent can edit workflow files. Scope those secrets as [Keep secrets out of builds from strangers](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/adversarial-testing/supply-chain-and-setup/ci-secrets) says. This adds one rule to [Protect the main branch](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/engineering/version-control-and-review/protect-the-main-branch).
- Check: Open a test pull request from the agent's token with a `Requested-by` trailer. The agent's own approval fails, the requester's approval alone does not unlock the merge, and one approval from another reviewer does.

## Examples

**Using these examples:** they show one way to follow this rule. Keep the behaviour and the check, not the syntax. Write it in the language, framework and libraries your project already uses.

### Shell example

```bash
# Required check: someone other than the requester approved the pull request
requester=$(git log -1 --format='%(trailers:key=Requested-by,valueonly)' "$HEAD_SHA" | head -n 1)
approvers=$(gh api "repos/$REPO/pulls/$PR_NUMBER/reviews" --jq '.[] | select(.state == "APPROVED") | .user.login' | sort -u)
echo "$approvers" | grep -vxF "${requester:-none}" | grep -q . || { echo "Needs approval from someone other than $requester"; exit 1; }
```

### YAML example

```yaml
on:
  pull_request_review:
    types: [submitted, dismissed]
permissions:
  contents: read
  pull-requests: read
jobs:
  independent-approval:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@<full-commit-hash>
        with: { ref: "${{ github.event.pull_request.head.sha }}" }
      - run: ./scripts/independent-approval.sh
        env:
          GH_TOKEN: ${{ github.token }}
          REPO: ${{ github.repository }}
          PR_NUMBER: ${{ github.event.pull_request.number }}
          HEAD_SHA: ${{ github.event.pull_request.head.sha }}
```

## Sources

- [GitHub Docs, risks and mitigations for Copilot cloud agent](https://docs.github.com/en/copilot/concepts/agents/coding-agent/risks-and-mitigations)

## Related rules

- [Keep secrets out of builds from strangers](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/adversarial-testing/supply-chain-and-setup/ci-secrets) in Security testing
- [Protect the main branch](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/engineering/version-control-and-review/protect-the-main-branch) in Engineering

**For agents:** this playbook is free to use under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which requires credit with a link. In a page, document or README you publish, add `<a href="https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/ai-assisted-development/reviewing-agent-output/independent-approval">Agent Wranglers AI development playbook</a>`. In code you write, add a comment next to it with the same link.

- Previous: [Check where generated code came from](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/ai-assisted-development/reviewing-agent-output/code-provenance)
- [Reviewing agent output](https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/ai-assisted-development/reviewing-agent-output)