Pre-execution Approval
Pre-execution approval pauses an allowed tool call right before it runs so a person can review it. It is not meant to stop every operation; use it for changes that are hard to undo, leave the organization, or affect many people.
Overview
How to require human review only for high-impact actions such as external sends, deletions, knowledge updates, or shared-data changes.
Basics
Actions that usually deserve approval
Use the blast radius of a mistake as the decision rule.
Good approval candidates:
- Creating, updating, or deleting knowledge
- Writing to, sending through, or deleting from external SaaS
- Changing shared databases or spreadsheets
- Changing settings through Custom MCP or meta-skills
If every read-only lookup requires approval, automation slows down quickly.
What happens when approval is required
When a worker reaches a tool call that requires approval, the run pauses at that point. A reviewer checks the approval request in the app and chooses Approve or Reject.
Approve lets the worker continue from the paused point. Reject prevents that tool execution, and the worker continues with that outcome.
Decide who owns pending approvals
If approval requests are left unattended, the automation remains paused. For important workers, decide who reviews approvals, when they normally check them, and who takes over during exceptions.
When Slack, Discord, or LINE WORKS channels are involved, make sure the reviewer has a practical notification path.
Balance automation speed and safety
Tune approval rules by worker purpose.
- Internal research and summarization workers: keep approvals minimal when they mostly read data
- Knowledge maintenance workers: require approval for create, update, and delete operations
- External SaaS operators: require approval for send, delete, publish, and other outward-facing writes
- Workers with administrative meta-skills: be stricter around configuration-changing actions
After configuring a worker, run one representative request and confirm it pauses only where review is actually needed.
Checklist
Do irreversible changes, external sends, and actions affecting many people require pre-execution confirmation?
Is there a clear owner who will review approval requests during normal operation?
Have you run a representative request and confirmed that only the intended step pauses for approval?