Commerce OS guide

Your Authority and Approvals

Guide status: Governance contract. Last reviewed 14 August 2026. Implemented policy controls and action domains must be verified in the installed version before authority is granted.

Purpose

Merchant authority is the boundary between what Liva 7 may understand, propose, prepare and execute. This guide defines four operating levels and the information required for a valid approval policy.

Authority belongs to the merchant and should be deliberate, scoped and reviewable. It is not inferred from installation, past approval or access to Shopify data.

Authority levels

  • Observe: inspect authorised evidence and health states without creating proposals or changes.
  • Recommend: prepare opportunities and recommendations, but do not execute them.
  • Ask First: prepare an action and require an authorised person to approve that specific scope.
  • Auto-execute: execute only the defined action class within an active approved policy.

Use the lowest effective level. Authority can differ by workspace, placement, market, product, value, duration and action type.

Create an approval policy

A useful policy names the action that is allowed and the actions that remain excluded. It defines eligible scope, evidence or readiness requirements, commercial and customer guardrails, volume or frequency limits, the operating period, safe fallback, stopping conditions, policy owner and review date.

The policy should also identify platform-controlled actions that always require the merchant, such as account ownership, permission changes, accepting charges and any Shopify publication step that the installed integration cannot safely perform.

Approve a specific action

  1. Review the evidence class, scope, freshness and limitations.
  2. Understand the exact change and the target state.
  3. Check inventory, margin, brand, privacy, market and customer-experience constraints.
  4. Confirm how execution, live verification and outcome measurement will be recorded.
  5. Approve, request revision, defer or dismiss, with a reason.

An approval becomes stale when its material evidence, scope, target or constraints change. In that case the action should return for review.

Safe use and revocation

Revoking or pausing authority should prevent new actions in that domain without destroying history. An in-progress action should follow its defined safe stopping behaviour. Failed or uncertain policy checks should result in no material change and an auditable exception, not wider implicit permission.

You are finished when

  • every enabled domain has a named owner and explicit level;
  • scope, exclusions, limits and review timing are recorded;
  • approval, execution and verification remain separate; and
  • the merchant can pause or reduce authority without losing history.