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 “always approve” to “approve only if not on whitelist” 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 (email, SMS, phone) offer three options:

• No — Actions execute immediately without approval
• Yes — All actions require approval
• Not on whitelist — Only actions to recipients not on the whitelist require approval

The “Not on whitelist” option is particularly useful: the agent can freely contact approved addresses, but needs your approval for anyone else. 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 whitelist?
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 — Click Approve or Reject
7. Action executes (or doesn’t) — Approved actions execute immediately; rejected actions are cancelled
8. Agent notified — Depending on notification settings, the agent learns the outcome and can take follow-up actions

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Agent notification settings

When you approve or reject an action, the agent can optionally be notified so it can take follow-up steps. This is configured per capability:

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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. Set the approval requirement and notification preference. See Guardrails for step-by-step instructions and details on configuring whitelists.

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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 “Not on whitelist” or disable approval entirely. Use whitelists with approval. The “Not on whitelist” option gives you the best of both worlds: the agent can communicate freely with known contacts, but you review anything new. Check the Activity page regularly. Since there are no push notifications, build a habit of checking pending approvals—especially for agents that run on schedules or respond to external triggers. 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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