Show HN: An authority gate for AI-generated customer communication
https://authority.bhaviavelayudhan.com
Hi HN,As more teams let AI draft or send customer-facing emails (support, billing, renewals), I’ve been noticing a quiet failure mode:
AI-generated messages making commitments no one explicitly approved. Refunds implied. Discounts promised. Renewals renegotiated.
Not hallucinations but AI doing its job with no authority boundary.
I built a small authority gate that sits between AI-generated messages and delivery.
It does not generate content or replace CRMs or support tools.
It only answers one question before a message is sent=> Is this message allowed to promise money, terms, or actions to a customer?
The system inspects outbound messages, detects customer-facing commitments (refunds, billing changes, renewals, cancellations), blocks delivery or requires human approval, logs every decision for auditability
I’ve made a public sandbox available for teams experimenting with AI-driven customer communication.
I’m not sure yet whether this is a niche edge case or an inevitable new infrastructure layer as AI adoption increases, so I’m especially interested in hearing:
a) whether you’ve seen similar failures
b) how you’re currently handling authority and approvals or why you think this problem won’t matter in practice
Sandbox + docs here: https://authority.bhaviavelayudhan.com
Happy to answer technical questions.
This is "AI" parroting humans who made authorised commitments.
If you don't want commitments out, don't feed them in.
The failure is architectural: once AI is allowed to draft at scale, “don’t feed it commitments” stops being a reliable control. Those patterns exist everywhere in historical data and live context.
At that point the question isn’t training, it’s where you draw the enforcement boundary for irreversible outcomes.
That’s the layer I’m testing.
Also I think confining irreversible outcomes to the results of commitments is unsafe. Consider the irreversible outcome of advice that leads to customer quitting. There isn't a separate "layer" here.
Training governs what a model tends to say. Authority governs what is allowed to be acted on.
You can’t pre-block bad advice, but you can pre-block unapproved financial or contractual actions.
That’s the scope.
"AI-generated messages making commitments no one explicitly approved. Refunds implied. Discounts promised. Renewals renegotiated."
And if you can't block bad advice, you have a bigger problem since you cannot block resultant contractual action by the recipient e.g. termination.
The break happens when AI drafts at scale. Training + sampling are after-the-fact controls. By the time a bad commitment is found, the customer expectation already exists.
This is just moving the boundary from social enforcement to a hard system boundary for irreversible actions.
Curious if you’ve seen teams hit that inflection point yet.
If it isn't, then you have no machine smart enough to provide a solution requiring /more/ intelligence.