GovernanceAgent systems topic

Human approval

Human approval is a control boundary for decisions that require accountable judgment. A useful approval presents the proposed action, arguments, evidence, consequences, and alternatives, then persists the decision so a paused run can resume safely.

Apply the lifecycleReview sources

Questions to answer

Resolve these before adding tools, frameworks, or automation.

  • What exact action, arguments, evidence, and consequences does the reviewer see?
  • Can the reviewer modify, reject, defer, or scope the approval?
  • How is paused state persisted and protected until the decision arrives?

Implementation lifecycle

Build the evidence in this order

  1. 01

    Interrupt

    Pause before the side effect and surface a complete, understandable decision packet.

  2. 02

    Decide

    Capture reviewer identity, scope, rationale, and any modified parameters.

  3. 03

    Resume

    Bind the decision to the original call, prevent replay, and continue from durable state.

Artifacts to maintain

  • approval request
  • decision record
  • resumable state
  • escalation policy

Continue through AgentAtlas

Evidence ledger

Primary documentation behind this guide

OpenAI

Human-in-the-loop

Approval-required tools, interruptions, rejection messages, persisted run state, resumption, and long-running approvals.

Anthropic

Configure permissions

Permission modes, explicit allow and deny rules, managed controls, and user approval for tool execution.

Next topic

Governance