User Approval

User approval puts a human checkpoint before sensitive agent actions. When approval is required, the agent pauses and waits for you to review and approve (or reject) the action before it executes.

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When to use approval

Approval is most valuable when:

• External communication — Emails, SMS, or calls to people outside your organization
• High-stakes actions — Anything that would be difficult or embarrassing to undo
• Early in agent lifecycle — While you’re building confidence in the agent’s behavior
• Sensitive data access — Actions involving confidential information

As you gain confidence in an agent, you can relax approval requirements — moving from “ask before every action” to “ask only when reaching new recipients” to “no approval needed.”

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What actions can require approval

Approval is configured per capability in the agent’s capability settings. Communication capabilities (Send Email, Send SMS, Make Phone Call) let you restrict the agent to an allow-list of recipients, then choose what happens for recipients inside and outside the list independently:

• Inside the allowed list — send straight through, or ask for your approval
• Outside the allowed list — block, or ask for your approval

A common setup is “send to known recipients without asking, ask before reaching anyone else.” If you don’t restrict the agent at all, you instead get a single “ask before every action” toggle — useful when you want broad reach but a human in the loop on every send. Other capabilities (HTTP requests, custom tools) typically expose a simple “require approval” toggle. See Guardrails for the full list of capabilities and their configuration options.

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Where approval requests appear

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In chat

When an agent needs approval during a conversation, an approval widget appears inline in the chat. You’ll see:

• The action the agent wants to take (e.g., “Send email”)
• Details of the action (recipient, subject, content)
• Approve and Reject buttons
• Status badge showing “Pending”

Click Approve to execute the action, or Reject to cancel it.

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Activity page

All approval requests—from chat and from background triggers—are listed on the agent’s Activity page under the Approvals tab. This is where you’ll see approval requests that happened outside of a chat conversation, such as:

• An email trigger that needs approval to respond
• A scheduled task that wants to send a report

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The approval flow

Here’s what happens when an agent attempts an action that requires approval:

1. Agent calls tool — The agent tries to send an email (or SMS, or make a call, etc.)
2. Platform checks settings — Is approval required for this capability? Is the recipient on the allow-list?
3. Approval record created — If approval is needed, a pending approval record is created
4. Agent pauses — The agent reports that the action is awaiting approval
5. You review — In chat or on the Activity page, you see the pending action
6. You decide — Optionally tick Notify agent, then click Approve or Reject
7. Action executes (or doesn’t) — Approved actions execute immediately; rejected actions are cancelled
8. Agent notified (optional) — If you ticked Notify agent, the agent learns the outcome and can take follow-up actions; otherwise it stays in the dark

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Notifying the agent of your decision

Each approval card has a Notify agent checkbox next to the Approve and Reject buttons. Tick it before clicking, and the agent learns the outcome and can take follow-up steps — for example updating a CRM after a sent email, or trying a different approach when you reject a call. Leave it unchecked, and the action either executes or doesn’t and that’s the end of it. The checkbox is off by default, so you decide per decision whether the agent needs to react. Inside a chat the checkbox is hidden — the agent is always notified there so the conversation can continue.

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Configuring approval

Configure approval in each capability’s settings. Open the agent, go to Capabilities, and find the capability you want to configure. Choose whether to restrict recipients to an allow-list, then set the inside-list and outside-list rules. See Guardrails for step-by-step instructions and details on configuring allow-lists.

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Best practices

Start with approval, then relax. When deploying a new agent, require approval for external communication. Once you’ve seen the agent handle a variety of situations correctly, you can switch to “ask only outside the allowed list” or disable approval entirely. Combine an allow-list with “ask for approval” outside it. This gives you the best of both worlds: the agent communicates freely with known contacts, and you review anything new. Watch the bell menu. Approvals created by background triggers fire an in-app notification (and an email, if you’ve opted in) to the agent’s owners. The Activity page is still where you’ll see the full list of pending approvals. Review before approving. Take a moment to actually read what the agent wants to do. The approval flow is only useful if you’re reviewing, not just clicking Approve.

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FAQ

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