Human approval is useful when it gives a person a meaningful chance to understand and change an action. It is not useful when somebody is asked to click “approve” on a queue of opaque summaries at machine speed.

Put review at the right boundary

Ask for approval before the agent sends an external message, changes a record, commits money, publishes content, or acts on uncertain information. Do not pause every harmless retrieval; save the human attention for the moments where judgement matters.

The approval screen should show the proposed action, the evidence used, the affected person or record, and any uncertainty. If the reviewer has to open five systems to understand the request, the workflow is not ready.

Give the reviewer real choices

• Approve exactly as proposed.
• Edit the draft and approve the edited version.
• Reject with a reason.
• Ask for more information.
• Escalate to someone with a different authority.

Those choices create useful feedback. A rejection reason can become a rule, a better source, or a new evaluation example.

Do not turn people into rubber stamps

Set a manageable queue, clear service levels, and escalation for urgent items. Show the important differences between cases instead of presenting every request in the same visual style. Rotate reviewers where appropriate so one person does not absorb all the risk.

Keep the audit trail honest

Record what the agent proposed, which sources and tools it used, what the reviewer changed, and what was finally executed. Do not claim that a person reviewed an action if they only approved a batch without seeing its contents.

Improve the workflow from approvals

Review patterns every week. If people always make the same edit, improve the prompt or template. If they reject a whole class of requests, narrow the agent’s authority. If they approve everything without looking, either the risk is lower than assumed or the review step has become theatre.

The best approval pattern is selective, legible, and reversible. It lets the agent move quickly on low-risk work while keeping accountable human judgement where it belongs.