I Built a Chrome Extension That Auto-Approves Tool Prompts in ChatGPT

The Problem

ChatGPT's tool-use ecosystem is growing fast. Desktop Commander, MCP servers, browser tools, code interpreter actions — they all share one annoying pattern: every action requires you to manually click "Approve", "Allow", "Start Process", or whatever the confirmation button says.

You're sitting there watching your AI agent work, and every 10 seconds it stops dead and waits for you to click a button. It kills the flow. It defeats the whole point of an autonomous agent.

The Solution

I built ChatGPT Auto Approve — a Chrome Manifest V3 extension that continuously watches the ChatGPT DOM for tool approval prompts and clicks the affirmative action automatically.

No popup interaction needed. No manual approval. It works with any tool that presents a permission dialog in ChatGPT.

What It Catches

The extension uses structural detection rather than brittle text matching. It looks for:

• Button pairs: A primary action button ("Approve", "Allow", "Start Process", "Set ...", "Confirm") paired with a negative button ("Deny", "Cancel", "Block")
• Dialog containers: [role="dialog"], Radix portals, or small card-like containers with limited button count
• Context signals: Pattern matching against 20+ phrases like "using tools comes with risks", "wants to use", "permission required", "MCP server", "execute code", "file access", etc.

This means it works with:

• Desktop Commander
• Any MCP server
• Browser tools
• Code interpreter / execution prompts
• File system access dialogs
• Any future ChatGPT plugin that follows the same approval pattern

How It Works Under the Hood

The content script injects into chatgpt.com and:

1. Watches the DOM via MutationObserver for added/removed nodes
2. Scans all interactive elements (button, [role="button"], input[type="submit"])
3. Scores each candidate using a weighted pattern system
4. Finds the approval container by walking up the DOM looking for structural signals
5. Auto-clicks the highest-scoring candidate with a multi-event dispatch

The Click Path

A bare .click() gets swallowed by React's synthetic event system. The extension uses a multi-layer approach:

el.focus();
el.click();
el.dispatchEvent(new PointerEvent('pointerdown', { bubbles: true }));
el.dispatchEvent(new PointerEvent('pointerup', { bubbles: true }));
el.dispatchEvent(new MouseEvent('click', { bubbles: true }));
// Plus keyboard events as fallback

Safety Rails

• 180ms delay before clicking (lets the UI settle)
• 420ms verification after the click to confirm it worked
• 6-second cooldown per approval to prevent double-fires
• Max 3 attempts per candidate before giving up
• Ignored buttons: Share, Copy, Edit, Retry, Regenerate, Read Aloud, thumbs up/down — normal chat UI is never touched

The Popup

Even though auto-approve runs headlessly, there's a full popup UI with:

• Live detection count with badge on the extension icon
• Toggle switches for auto-approve, badge count, and history logging
• Approval history with relative timestamps ("Just now", "5 min ago", etc.)
• Dark theme with orange accent

Installation

git clone https://github.com/Idevelopusefulstuff/chatgpt-auto-approve.git

1. Open chrome://extensions
2. Enable Developer mode
3. Click Load unpacked and select the cloned folder
4. Open ChatGPT and trigger any tool action — it auto-approves

Source Code

Full source on GitHub: Idevelopusefulstuff/chatgpt-auto-approve

MIT licensed. PRs welcome.

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Built because clicking "Approve" 47 times per session is not a workflow.