In this talk, I will first review recent progress on black hole actions in the hypersurface model. I will then introduce a general framework that bridges Compton amplitudes and black hole perturbation theory, and explain how this connection can be used to determine the unknown parts of the action. Finally, I will present an outlook on a wide range of applications, including fixing the Compton amplitude with spin and finite-size effects, extracting quasi-normal modes, and extending the framework to nonlinear effects beyond black hole perturbation theory.