Approval steps before risky actions
9 October 2026
Some actions should not happen without a person agreeing to them. Sending money, deleting data, emailing customers and changing production settings are common examples. An approval step pauses the agent before the action and waits.
What the pause really is
The important part is that waiting must not hold a process open. A person might answer in five seconds or five days. So the agent should save its state, record that it is waiting for a decision, and stop.
When the decision arrives, the run is loaded from storage and continues. This only works if state is persisted, which is why approvals and durable execution go together.
What to store
- the proposed action and its exact arguments
- who needs to approve it
- when the request was made
- the decision, who made it, and when
What the approver should see
Show the action in plain words, with the real values. "Refund 4,200 INR to order 18734" is clear. "Run tool refund with params" is not. Include enough context to decide without opening other systems.
Handle the unhappy paths
- Rejection. The agent needs a defined way to continue or stop when the answer is no.
- Timeout. Decide what happens if nobody responds. Usually the safe choice is to cancel.
- Edits. Sometimes the approver wants to change a value. Allow it, and record the change.
Do not approve everything
If every step needs approval, people stop reading the requests. Reserve approvals for actions that are hard to undo or costly when wrong.