Python: bind tool-approval responses to surfaced approval requests (#7383)

[Tony Dzi (Anton Dziatkovskii) (tonydzi)]

Summary

Closes the gap tracked in #7383 by mirroring the .NET behavior from #7111 in the Python core: a function_approval_response is treated as a decision token bound to the approval request that was actually surfaced, not as a work order carrying its own function call.

Opened as a draft deliberately: #7383 is assigned to Eduard van Valkenburg (@eavanvalkenburg), and this is the working draft I offered on #7345 — please treat it as raw material, not a claim on the issue. Close it freely in favor of your own implementation, or tell me what to change and I'll iterate.

What changes

• When an approval batch pauses, the surfaced (visible) approval requests are recorded in the session tool-approval state bag (surfaced_approval_requests), with the same session gating as the existing already-approved-siblings mechanism.
• On resume, _resolve_approval_responses binds each inbound decision back to its recorded request: the recorded function call is what executes. An embedded call that differs from the recorded one is logged (logger.warning) and ignored, so an edited or replayed response cannot execute a call that was never surfaced.
• Records are one-time-use: consumed by the first decision for that request id, approved or rejected — a rejected request cannot be re-approved from a stale response later.
• Sessionless flows are unchanged: with no session there is no record, and responses pass through exactly as before. No public API changes.

Known edges (reviewer input welcome)

• Reused call ids: the record store is keyed by approval-request id (= call_id), so if the same call id is surfaced again in a later turn the newer record wins. That matches the correlate-by-latest intuition but differs from _collect_unanswered_approval_requests, which keeps the first occurrence — happy to align either way.
• State restore semantics: restoring an older session state snapshot restores the approval records that existed then (same as the existing already-approved groups). If time-travel restore should invalidate prior approval state, that seems like a property of the state layer rather than this binding.

Testing

• Two new tests in test_harness_tool_approval.py: an approval response carrying an edited call executes the surfaced call (the edited arguments never reach the tool), and the record is consumed on first decision.
• Full runs of test_harness_tool_approval.py (27 passed), plus test_function_invocation_logic.py, test_sessions.py, test_security.py: 475 passed, 3 skipped, 4 failed — the 4 failures are environment-dependent (aiohttp / MCP extras) and fail identically on clean main in the same environment.

Disclosure

Architecture and validation are mine; the code and text were drafted in pair with Claude (commit carries Assisted-by:).

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[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Binds Python tool-approval decisions to session-recorded approval requests to prevent edited calls and replay.

Changes:

• Records surfaced approval requests in session state.
• Rebinds approved responses and consumes stored requests.
• Adds binding and consumption tests.

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 1 comment.

File	Description
python/packages/core/agent_framework/_tools.py	Implements approval recording, binding, and consumption.
python/packages/core/tests/core/test_harness_tool_approval.py	Tests edited responses and record consumption.

Suppressed comments (4)

python/packages/core/agent_framework/_tools.py:2159

• A session with no surfaced_approval_requests map is currently treated like a sessionless invocation. After the final record is removed below—or when resuming state serialized before this change—a stale/fabricated approved response is therefore executed unchanged, defeating one-time consumption. Only state is None should retain passthrough behavior; a session-backed response without a recorded unresolved request must be ignored or rejected, with all supported local approval paths recorded first.

    state = _get_tool_approval_state(invocation_session)
    raw_surfaced = state.get(_SURFACED_APPROVAL_REQUESTS_KEY) if state is not None else None
    if state is None or not isinstance(raw_surfaced, dict):
        return [response for response in approval_responses if response.approved]

python/packages/core/agent_framework/_tools.py:2172

• An approved response whose ID is absent from the record is still appended and executed from its caller-supplied function call. This permits an unsurfaced approval to execute whenever the session happens to contain records for other requests. Unknown or malformed records must be ignored/rejected rather than passed through.

        if recorded is None or recorded.type != "function_call":
            responses_to_execute.append(response)
            continue

python/packages/core/agent_framework/_tools.py:2185

• Reconstructing the response drops its annotations, additional properties, and raw representation. Function middleware receives this response through context.metadata["approval_response"], so session-backed approvals now lose caller metadata that previously passed through. Preserve the original decision content and replace only its untrusted function_call.

        responses_to_execute.append(
            Content.from_function_approval_response(
                id=response.id,  # type: ignore[arg-type]
                function_call=recorded,
                approved=True,
            )

python/packages/core/agent_framework/_tools.py:2831

• Only the list sent to the executor is rebound; _replace_approval_contents_with_results still receives the original edited responses. If an embedded call_id was changed, execution produces a result under the recorded call ID, but normalization looks it up under the edited ID and emits no terminal result, leaving the approval wrapper in the transcript. Bind the pending response map itself (including rejected decisions), then derive approved executions from that canonical map.

    responses_to_execute = _bind_approval_responses_to_surfaced_requests(
        invocation_session,
        list(pending_approval_responses.values()),
    )

---

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[Baby Blue Viper (babyblueviper1)]

Good, this closes the specific gap cleanly -- rebind-to-recorded-call is the right primitive regardless of how the state-restore question eventually gets answered.

On the state-restore known edge: agreed on the layering (staleness-invalidation belongs to the state layer, not this binding) -- but worth naming the concrete residual explicitly, since "that's a property of the state layer" can read as "not a real problem" if it's left implicit. As written, a surfaced_approval_requests record has no expiry of its own, so a session resumed from a week-old snapshot can still consume a record that's a week stale -- correctly bound to the correct call, but arguably to a decision nobody should still be honoring. If the state layer doesn't already carry a TTL/staleness concept for other record types in the same bag, this PR is probably the right trigger to open that as its own explicit follow-up rather than something this binding needs to solve inline.

[Baby Blue Viper (babyblueviper1)]

Real, well-tested implementation of the shape from #7383 -- the record/rebind/consume discipline holds up exactly as discussed, and the one-time-use consumption (approved OR rejected) closes the replay gap cleanly.

On the open question (newest-record-wins vs first-occurrence): newest wins is the right call, and here's the concrete reasoning from our own analogous case. Our /review verdicts bind to an intended_verifier/context at issuance time specifically because a verdict issued for one context shouldn't silently authorize a different one later -- and the same logic applies here in reverse: if the same call_id gets RE-surfaced in a later turn, that's the system asking the approver to look at it again, presumably because something about the context changed. The approver's decision on THAT most recent surfacing is what they actually saw and reasoned about. Binding to the first occurrence would risk executing a call the approver technically "approved" once, but under conditions that no longer hold by the time it actually runs -- the same staleness risk a decision_ref without a fresh binding would have. _collect_unanswered_approval_requests keeping the first occurrence is answering a different question (what's still outstanding), not which decision is authoritative -- I wouldn't align them.

Nice, concrete edge case caught in the tests (edited call args never reaching the tool) -- that's the actual security property, not just the happy path.