--- name: orchestrator-present-approval description: Use when presenting a returned APPROVAL_REQUEST for informed user consent --- # Present Approval — Orchestrator Branch Present trusted contract data exactly. Do not execute, derive, shorten, reorder, or silently expand it. ## The surface is rendered, never composed WHAT the user sees is produced Gaia-side from the sealed payload by one function -- `hooks/adapters/consent_presentation.py::render_native_text`, over that module's `VISIBLE_FIELDS` table -- and it comes out identical on every host. Its exact shape, field set, render order and absence semantics are stated in `template.md`. Show that text verbatim. Compose nothing, summarise nothing, reorder nothing, translate no label. For an existing pending id, read both presentation pieces with `gaia approvals show --consent-surface`. The JSON `visible_text` field is that rendered surface byte-for-byte; print it unchanged. Use the JSON `approve_label` field unchanged for the approval control -- Gaia sources it from `render_approve_label`, so the presenter must not rebuild it. This read records no `SHOWN` event and makes no decision or grant. ## Select the host modality before presenting or asking Consent data is host-neutral; control flow is not. Determine the active host first, then follow its branch below. On Claude Code, presentation is a printed MESSAGE followed by a binary QUESTION. On OpenCode, the owning specialist's attempt provokes the host-managed question in the already-known specialist child; that question is native and binary. Activation is followed by resuming that same specialist session by `task_id`. Calling an ask tool before making this selection is therefore wrong: it resolves Claude Code consent but activates nothing on OpenCode. `template.md` documents both transports while keeping the Gaia-rendered surface single-source. Its printed-message adjacency rules apply only to the Claude Code branch; OpenCode carries the same rendered `visible_text` inside the native question in the specialist child it already knows. It does not create or discover a separate control child. ## The reply must resolve to the approval id The user's reply must be resolvable to the `approval_id`, because that identifier is what the hook layer matches against the pending row before any grant exists (`hooks/modules/security/approval_grants.py::extract_approval_id_from_label` feeding `hooks/modules/security/approval_grants.py::activate_db_pending_by_id`). How the identifier gets there turns on one condition: - If the host's reply carries its own correlation handle back to the request that produced it, that handle suffices. The id does not need to be in the control at all. - If the reply carries no correlation of its own -- and a host may return nothing but the text of the control the user selected -- then the id MUST travel in that text, because that text is the only thing that comes back. For the second case, Gaia's resolver reads one form and only that form: the selected control's text must begin with the literal English word `Approve` and must end with the complete canonical id bracketed as `[P-<32 lowercase hex>]`. A translated verb, any paraphrase of `Approve`, a short display label, a raw nonce, or suffix text after the bracket all read as no identifier. Activation then resolves that exact id; it never scans for a matching prefix. ## Two ways consent reaches Gaia The rendered surface is host-neutral. How the user's answer becomes an activated grant is not: there are two modalities, and the host you are running in fixes which one applies. Selecting the wrong one produces a user who believes they consented and a ledger that never heard it. **Resolved by reply -- Claude Code.** Print the surface as text, then ask the binary question. The selected control's text comes back through the host's question result, the resolver reads the `approval_id` out of it and activates the grant in that same call. The harness needs exactly two things: print text, and offer two controls whose chosen one returns its own text or a correlation handle. Nothing renders the eight visible fields or parses the sealed payload host-side. **Provoked by attempt -- OpenCode.** Printing the surface and asking the question activates nothing there. Dispatch the owning specialist with `execution` to attempt the operation; the host matches the attempt to the already-pending id and queues its control on that specialist's already-bound child. The plugin prompts that same child with the canonical rendered surface and the native binary question. Its `promptAsync` body does not replace the child's agent or tool permissions. No second request is minted and no newly uncached control child exists. The attempt ENDS the specialist's turn. On OpenCode the block is a tool error, and a tool error terminates the specialist's capacity to wait: it closes `APPROVAL_REQUEST` and returns. "Stay in the turn until the user answers" is an instruction no OpenCode specialist can follow, and a plan that relies on it leaves an armed grant with nobody to use it (measured 2026-09-16: the user approved 55 seconds before the orchestrator closed its own turn). The retry therefore has a second dispatch, and its shape is fixed: once the user activates the approval, the host notifies the ROOT session with the specialist session id and command index. The orchestrator consumes that notice and re-dispatches the specialist with `task_id` set to the already-known child and `execution` as the instruction; the user is never asked to locate or open an internal session. The typed grant is bound to that same session, agent, tool family, and exact command or path. A dispatch without that binding is not the designed retry. The answer does not make the blocked operation executable immediately. The original attempt remains blocked, and the plugin holds the typed retry descriptor outside the executable retry map until the specialist session emits `session.idle`. Only that safe idle transition arms the exact retry and notifies the root. Chat text, custom answers, and approval prose cannot take that transition: only one of the two labels from the exact correlated native question is a decision. In one line: on Claude Code consent is resolved by reply; on OpenCode it is provoked by attempt and resumed by re-dispatch. This skill names the two hosts because the selection is the orchestrator's decision, not an adapter detail; what each host calls its controls still belongs in its adapter. ## What failure looks like On Claude Code, the reply resolves to no pending row. Nothing activates, no grant is inserted, the ledger stays `PENDING`, and every retry of the blocked command re-blocks on the same `approval_id` -- while the user believes they consented. That is the incident this skill exists to prevent, and it is exactly as reachable on a single command as on a COMMAND_SET. The residual risk has a fixed direction: resolution is the sole predicate and nothing else reads the reply, so an unresolvable reply under-grants and no reply shape over-grants. A reply that resolves to nothing is a finding, not a no-op: report it, then re-present with a well-formed control. On OpenCode, one REQUESTED event with no presentation and a still-pending decision is what text-only presentation produces every time. Re-presenting is not a remedy; dispatch the specialist to attempt the operation. If the host cannot open, decide, notify, or bind the typed retry, read the exact cause from the specialist error and harness events, then report it rather than presenting again. Concrete event and tool spellings live in `reference.md`. On either host, before dispatching execution confirm with `gaia approvals show ` that the approval actually left `pending`. Presentation and activation are separate events, and that read is the only thing that distinguishes a grant that activated from one that is silently still pending. ## One decision per presentation Present one approval at a time, so the user can read what they are signing. Several exact commands folded into one decision is one signature over a surface nobody consented to field by field. This is presentation hygiene, and it is deliberately stated without a number: how many decisions a single interaction can carry is a property of the host's primitive, and belongs in adapter code rather than in this prose. OpenCode enforces the same rule when approvals overlap. Each specialist child has one guarded FIFO queue, and only its head may be presented. A second approval remains queued while the first question is active, while its accepted decision is waiting for safe idle, and while its typed retry remains unsettled. The scheduler advances only after those states clear; a later reply cannot activate an unpresented entry or overwrite the first retry. ## Singular vs COMMAND_SET presentation There is no layout to choose. A singular request and a COMMAND_SET are the same rendered shape -- the same indexed `COMMANDS (N)` block carries one command or many -- so there is no second form to select and no field to decide about. `template.md` states that shape; show it verbatim. One approval control covers the whole set, never one per command. Do not call a COMMAND_SET atomic: consent is grouped, execution is separate, ordered, and fail-fast. Do not claim verification has happened; this is the pre-execution consent point, and the surface's `VERIFICATION` field states what to check afterwards. Approval activation verifies the REQUESTED fingerprint. Presentation must still be exact because informed consent depends on what the human sees. If the contract is incomplete, reordered, mismatched, or ambiguous, do not repair it; route back to the producer. ## Who activates, who executes If the user approves, the orchestrator resumes the already-known owning specialist child in a new dispatched turn with the grant context and `execution` skill; the orchestrator never runs the commands itself and never asks the user to manage an internal session. The user's decision on the presented surface IS the activation, and it creates the grant in the same call: `activate_db_pending_by_id` reads the pending payload's scope and inserts the very row the guard will read -- `create_command_set_grant` for a `COMMAND_SET`, `gaia.store.writer.insert_file_path_grant` for a `SCOPE_FILE_PATH` protected-path Write/Edit, `gaia.store.writer.insert_semantic_grant` for a single command. Nothing further has to be run to arm the approval, which also means the grant's window opens at the DECISION, not at the retry: a re-dispatched specialist is spending that window while it grounds itself. Read the remaining window with `gaia approvals show ` (`grant_state`, `expires_at`) before dispatching, and re-present rather than dispatch into a window that has closed. `gaia approvals approve` is a separate, CLI-only admin verb. Its shared typed activation creates the matching grant, but it is not available to the orchestrator: the trusted-CLI role guard (`hooks/modules/security/gaia_cli_only_guard.py`, `EXPLICITLY_DENIED_PHRASES`) categorically denies `approvals approve` / `revoke` / `reject` / `reject-all` / `clean` / `replay` for the orchestrator role, non-approvable -- the orchestrator may only *read* approval state (`approvals list` / `show` / `pending` / `history` / `stats`, in `ALLOWED_READ_PHRASES`). Reads are the orchestrator's; approval decisions are not -- they happen exclusively through the decision the user makes.