/ax-audit

Chat interface for actions that should be buttons

User wants to toggle a setting or trigger a known action, but chat is the only interface. They type "turn on dark mode" and wait for a round-trip instead of flipping a switch. Chat is the ONLY path to deterministic actions.

What goes wrong

User types "enable dark mode" in chat; agent responds after 2 seconds. A toggle would take 50ms. Multiply across every simple action and chat becomes a bottleneck.

Detection

Surfaces: agent-chat

Auditability: observational

Static signals:

1. Find chat input surfaces.
2. Identify deterministic actions achievable through chat (toggles, selections, CRUD).
3. Flag cases where chat is the only path to a simple action.

Concrete commands:

rg -l 'ChatInput|MessageInput|PromptInput' --type=ts src/
rg -l 'Toggle|Switch|Select|Dropdown' --type=ts src/components/

Judgment signals:

• The anti-pattern is chat-only for deterministic actions. Some conversational interface is expected.
• Controls rendered inside the chat stream count: an MCP Apps ui:// resource or an AI SDK data-* part that renders a real toggle, table, or picker is direct manipulation. The fail is a text box as the only path.

False-positive guards:

• Skip // ax-audit-ignore:control-over-conversational, test, and Storybook files.

Fix

Add direct-manipulation controls alongside chat: quick-action buttons, command palette, context menus. Keep chat for ambiguous or multi-step requests.

Examples

Anti-pattern (fails):

<div>
  <DataTable data={data} />
  <AgentChat onSend={handleAgentCommand} /> {/* no sort, filter, or action controls */}
</div>

Applied (passes):

<div>
  <DataTable data={data} onSort={handleSort} sortable />
  <QuickActions actions={[{ label: "Export CSV", handler: exportCsv }]} />
  <AgentChat onSend={handleAgentCommand} />
</div>

Default tier and overrides

Defaults to: fix-this-sprint

Suppression

{/* ax-audit-ignore:control-over-conversational, chat-first product by design */}
<AgentChat onSend={onSend} />