Guide
Human approval in AI automation: when to use it
Approval is for the step a customer, a teammate, or a calendar will notice. It is the wrong tool for a read you are happy to repeat.
Always wait
Gmail send, Telegram send, Google Calendar create, and Google Calendar delete wait even when the crew is autonomous. Zendesk’s public reply waits too. These actions are external or destructive. The product does not offer a switch that turns that wait off.
Sometimes wait
A Gmail draft is a write that does not send. It waits only when the crew’s autonomy is approval. If you want every draft reviewed before it even exists in the mailbox, set the crew that way. If you only care about the send, leave the draft to run and keep the pause on send.
Never the whole crew
Putting a person in front of every read trains the team to click through. Put them in front of the send. The run shows the waiting step, so the approver can see the draft instead of a vague “the AI did something”.
Questions
Is approval the same as suggest-only?
No. Suggest-only crews may read and reason, and they may not change external systems. Approval mode can still change things after a person allows the step.