What to log when an AI assistant changes an ad

The minimum log entry

• Request: who asked, in what words, and when.
• Proposal: the change the assistant suggested, in plain words, before anything was applied.
• Approval: the name of the person who approved, the time, and the channel used.
• Before: the exact value of each field that will change, copied from the platform.
• After: the exact value written, copied again from the platform once the change is live.
• Read-back: the live setting checked the next day, marked as matched or not matched.
• Reason: one sentence on why the change was made and which metric it was meant to move.

Why the fields matter

The request and the approval show who is responsible. The before and after values make the change reversible. The read-back shows that the platform holds what the log says. Without the read-back, the log records an intention, not a result. See read-back for the full idea.

Where it lives

• In the agency's own change log, one row per change, searchable without the assistant. A batch of ten edits is ten rows, not one summary line.

Rules for the assistant

• The assistant proposes and a person approves, under the approval workflow. The assistant never marks its own change as approved.
• The before values come from a live read. If the before value cannot be read, the change does not start.