Workflow in a Minute: Human approval

In one sentence

Human approval is a required pause before an agent takes an action you are not willing to automate blindly.

Why it matters

Full autonomy is not the goal. Reliable delivery is. Approval gates convert agent speed into reviewed change.

How it works

Put humans on the irreversible or high-blast-radius steps:

• plan approval for large refactors;
• diff review before merge;
• push/deploy/production credentials;
• destructive data operations;
• new MCP servers or widened permissions.

Do not put humans on every file save. That recreates manual coding with extra latency.

Example

Autonomous: edit files, run unit tests in a worktree. Ask first: git push, changing CI secrets, publishing packages.

Agentic coding use

Good agent systems make approval points explicit in the workflow, not buried in chat etiquette. Permissions and product UX should match the policy.

Watch out

Rubber-stamp approvals teach everyone to ignore gates. If you always click allow, tighten defaults or remove the fake gate.