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Safety · medium

11. Human-in-the-loop approval gates

Pause before irreversible actions and resume with a durable token.

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Classify every tool by reversibility. Read tools run freely; reversible writes run with logging; irreversible or costly actions (payments, deletions, emails to customers, on-chain transactions) require approval.

ts
const RISK = { search: "read", update_draft: "reversible", send_invoice_email: "approval" } as const;

if (RISK[call.name] === "approval") {
  const id = await approvals.create({ runId, call, requestedBy: userId });   // durable row
  return { status: "paused", approvalId: id };        // the loop stops here
}

Persist the whole run state when pausing so the agent can resume hours later in a different process. Show the reviewer the exact arguments and the reasoning that produced them, and record who approved what. Batch-approving without visible arguments defeats the gate.

Exercise: add an approval gate to a destructive tool, then resume the run from the stored state after approval and confirm no step is re-executed twice.

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Check your understanding

  1. 1. Which actions warrant a human approval gate?

  2. 2. What must be persisted when pausing for approval?

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