What is an AI worker run receipt?
A run receipt is the record an AI worker leaves after every run showing what it read, what it did, what it cost and what it skipped.
Unattended does not mean unwatched. A worker you cannot inspect is one you will eventually switch off, because the first time it does something surprising you have no way to find out why.
What a receipt carries, and why each part matters
| Recorded | Answers |
|---|---|
| What it read, and from which app | "Where did it get that from?" |
| Each tool call it made | "What did it actually touch?" |
| Model tokens consumed | "What did this run cost?" |
| What it skipped, and why | "Why is there no output today?" |
| The run context and webhook payload | "What was it sent?" |
Every run writes one, whether it came from a schedule, a webhook trigger, or an on-demand run.
Skips are recorded, not swallowed
The skip cases deserve their own paragraph, because they are where unattended systems normally go quiet.
If a balance will not cover a run's reserve, the run does not half-happen: it is skipped and the receipt says so. If the daily tool-call cap is reached, the worker stops and picks its schedule back up after the reset, and that is on the receipt too. Same for a model that was unavailable.
A silent skip is the worst outcome available. It looks exactly like success until somebody notices a week of missing work.
Why this is a safety feature, not a logging feature
Consider Invoice Follow-up Assistant, which reaches email and Drive to chase overdue invoices with escalating reminder drafts. It touches money and customers.
The honest way to manage that risk is not to promise the worker will never be wrong. It is three things:
- Grant narrow access in the first place, per app at Off, Read or Write (app firewall).
- Keep the ability to revoke without stopping the worker.
- Be able to reconstruct, afterwards, exactly what it did.
The receipt is the third. It turns "the worker sent something odd" from a mystery into a diagnosis, which is why it exists on every plan rather than as an audit upsell.
Support Inbox Triager makes the same case at volume: it classifies, prioritises, drafts and files all day, and the receipt is how you check its judgement without reading every ticket yourself.
What a receipt cannot tell you
Naming the limits is what makes the rest worth trusting.
A receipt records what happened, not whether it was right. It will show you that a support worker classified eleven threads and drafted four replies. It cannot tell you that two of those classifications were wrong, because that judgement is the thing you are checking. In the first weeks of a worker's life the receipt is a reading list, not a verdict.
It is also a record rather than an alarm. Nothing in a receipt pages you at 3am; it is there when you go looking. For a worker whose failure would be expensive within the hour, the receipt is the wrong instrument on its own, and the right design is a job whose mistakes are recoverable rather than urgent.
How long receipts are kept
| Plan | Log history |
|---|---|
| Free | 1 day |
| Pro | 30 days |
| Team | 365 days |
| Enterprise | 365 days |
Free's single day is enough to debug a worker you are actively setting up, which is what it is for. Thirty days on Pro covers "what happened last month", which is the question that actually gets asked.
FAQ
Does every AI worker run leave a receipt?
Yes. Scheduled, triggered and on-demand runs all write one, on every plan including Free. The difference between plans is how long the history is kept, not whether it is recorded.
How do I find out why a worker did not run?
The receipt states the reason. The common ones are a wallet balance that would not cover the run's reserve, the daily tool call cap being reached, or a model being unavailable. In each case the run is skipped rather than half-completed, and nothing is deleted.
Can I see what a worker read, not just what it changed?
Yes. Reads are recorded alongside writes, which is what makes it possible to answer "where did it get that from" rather than only "what did it send".
Is the audit trail a paid feature?
No. Receipts ship on every plan including Free, alongside the rest of the safety layer (app firewall, contact rules, redaction). Only the retention window varies by plan.
Do receipts show what a run cost?
Yes, the model tokens the run consumed. Those bill at the provider list price with no markup, from the wallet or your own key. See /pricing.