Approval Workflow
An approval workflow is a defined checkpoint where an AI agent pauses and waits for a person to sign off before it completes a consequential action.
An approval workflow is what turns a policy into a mechanism. The agent prepares the action in full, sending the draft, the record change or the outbound message, then holds it and surfaces it for review. A person approves, edits or rejects, and only then does the action take effect. The work is already done when it reaches the reviewer, which is what separates this from asking a person to do the task themselves.
Where the checkpoints sit is the real design decision. Put one in front of every action and the agent stops being worth running. Put none in front of anything that touches a customer, a contract or a system of record, and the agent is not deployable. Most companies end up with a small number of clearly consequential actions gated and the rest running through.