Human-in-the-Loop (HITL) Overview

When a rule returns defer, the action is queued until a reviewer approves or denies it. That is the Human-in-the-Loop path the runtime and SDK both understand.

The Python SDK exposes block_until_approved(), and the Node SDK exposes blockUntilApproved() with the same basic behavior. The audit stream and callback stream keep the action visible while it is pending.

Approval channels in the checked-in tree include the web UI, the live audit stream, Slack webhook routing, and PagerDuty escalation hooks in the daemon configuration.

Caution

Fail-closed is the default. If no reviewer responds inside the timeout window, the safe behavior is to keep the action blocked.

Read Approval Workflows and Web UI & Dashboard.