Human-in-the-loop, done properly: approvals for AI agents
Explore AI agent approval workflows in GlowForm
“Human in the loop” is easy to claim and easy to do badly. A confirm dialog that says “Proceed?” with no detail is a human in the loop who has been given nothing to decide with. Here is what a real approval step needs.
The approver sees the whole proposal
Not “retry job”. The operation, the exact inputs, the scope (one customer, this environment), what it will not do (no customer email goes out), who asked and why. An approval is a signature; the signer has to be able to read the document.
The approval is scoped like any other permission
Who may approve a production retry is a policy question: a manager for this pipeline, not any manager, and not the person who asked. Encode it. In GlowForm, the policy names an approver or approver group. The requester cannot approve their own request, and the owner role alone does not grant approval authority. The requester’s permissions are checked again when approval is attempted and before execution.
Approvals expire and are single-use
A yes given on Tuesday is not a yes for the same operation every Tuesday. Bind the approval to one specific proposal, let it run once, and let it lapse if nobody acts. Standing approvals are permissions wearing a costume; if you want one, grant the permission and say so.
The decision is on the record
Record who approved, when, and which request they reviewed. GlowForm saves the approval decision and its audit entry in one database transaction, then queues the external action. Its execution result is recorded separately. If the external result is uncertain, check the target system before retrying.
Keep most things out of the loop
If everything needs approval, approvers stop reading. The point of a permission model is that most of what people ask is allowed outright, a little needs their own confirmation, and only production-shaped and money-shaped actions need someone else. Reserve the human for the decisions that need one.
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