Approvals

Approvals are the human gate between an agent proposing an action and performing it. Every decision becomes part of the audit record. The approvals surface is /approvals. This page is the product reference; the decision method lives under Approving agent actions, and approval design for builders lives under FDE approvals.

The queue

• The queue lists pending approvals with assignee, type, and status filters plus due-date sort. Rows shown are work-item approvals: PRESHAi - AI Implementation - One Pager (Chris McGovern, Jul 21) and three Diana Gonzalez items from Jul 31, 4 of 4 pending.
• Three kinds flow through one queue: work item, schedule, and agent approvals. The empty panes say so outright: choose a work item, schedule, or agent approval to review, and select one to view comments.
• Decide at request time; do not batch ten approvals with one click. Denials are first-class outcomes, not failures.

• Selecting a work-item approval opens the artifact under review with its work-item context beside the decision action.
• The decision lands on the linked work item and becomes part of the audit record.

The decision

• Selecting a row opens the artifact under review with a due date, a Make Decision action, and a comments rail. The row shown previews a one-pager slide due Jul 22, 2026, with thumbnail strip, zoom control, and @-mention comments.
• Every request should tell you what (exact action and parameters), on what (target system, record, or scope), and why (justification linking the action to the session goal). If any of the three is missing or vague, pause instead of guessing.

Allow, deny, redirect

Run the five checks in order (what, on what, why, blast radius, policy fit). All five must pass for an allow:

• Allow when all five checks pass. Watch the result land in the transcript; confirm it did what was proposed.
• Deny when anything is off: unclear action, wrong target, weak justification, unacceptable blast radius. If the agent re-proposes the same action without new justification, end the session and report it.
• Redirect when the goal itself drifted: end or rescope the session instead of approving piecemeal. Do not approve your way out of a misscoped session.

Beyond the gate

• Tracked outcomes attach as work items: types, fields, and defaults live under Work Item Types, status behavior under Settings Workflows (the Approval workflow carries 4 statuses). The full model lives on the Work items hub.
• Open deliverables on the Home console track work already in flight; the handoff pack shape is under FDE handoff.
• Pattern review rides the record: repeated denials mean the environment, goal, or policy is wrong; zero denials across many sessions means rubber-stamping. Inputs live under Observability (/ai/runs).

Decisions happen inside sessions and are recorded under /ai/runs. New to the gate? Start with Approving agent actions.