AI agent glossary
Audit trail
A durable, tamper-evident record of what an agent did, on whose behalf, and who approved it, kept so an organization can answer questions later.
Debug traces help engineers fix problems this week. An audit trail answers different questions months later: why did the agent deny this refund, who gave it access to billing, and who approved the change. It records actions, the identity behind them, approvals, and the versions of prompts and models in use.
Because audit records may be used as evidence, they should be hard to alter quietly. A common technique is to chain entries together with hashes so any edit or deletion is detectable, and to store them separately from the systems the agent can touch.
Keep audit records for a deliberate period that matches your obligations, and keep them free of secrets and unnecessary personal data.
Each refund the support agent issues writes an audit entry with the ticket, the customer, the amount, the policy rule applied, the approver, and the prompt version.
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