Approval concepts

An approval is the seam between an agent's initiative and your judgement: a card that appears in the chat where the action was attempted, holding that action until a person decides. Agents propose — a document write, an outbound API call, a workflow run — and nothing executes while the card is pending. The chat composer says so explicitly: Respond to the pending request above to continue.

This page is the mental model — what fires an approval, what the card offers, and what a decision leaves behind. The workflow-specific gates live on Approvals in workflows; where the requirements are declared lives on Configure approvals.

What fires an approval

Every card comes from an agent trying to act on something that outlives the conversation:

• Plans — an agent proposes a multi-step plan as a Proposed plan card; Approve & execute starts it.
• Document writes — a Save to documents card holds files an agent wants to store; nothing lands in the document hub until approved.
• Knowledge writes — a Save to knowledge base card holds a fact an agent wants to remember org-wide.
• Integration calls — an operation flagged as requiring approval (outbound writes, typically) holds with the exact parameters shown.
• MCP tools — a tool the server marks Requires approval asks before it runs.
• Workflow creation, updates, and runs — the workflow-side gates, covered in Approvals in workflows.

The decisions on a card

Every card carries the action's exact payload — the file, the fact, the parameters — and two decisions: approve (the button names the action, such as Run workflow or Approve & execute) or reject. Integration cards add a third path, Suggest changes: describe what is wrong in free text and the agent revises the call instead of abandoning it.

States and the trail

A card moves through Pending to Executing to Completed — or Rejected — and keeps its resolved state in the transcript, so a chat rereads as a record of what was allowed. Each decision also lands in the audit log with the actor, the action, and the timestamp. Resolved cards cannot be re-opened; a retry means a fresh proposal and a fresh card.

Where this fits

Approvals are what let you hand agents real capabilities — files, APIs, workflows — without handing over the record of who allowed what. Read Configure approvals next to see where a requirement is switched on, and Approvals in workflows for the gates around workflows.