Glossary
Approval gate
A configured stop that holds a named agent action until a person approves it.
An approval gate is a stop the harness enforces before a named action. The action can be sending a message, editing a record, deleting a file, or spending money. The run waits. A person approves or rejects that step. That person is the human in the loop.
OpenAI’s workspace-agents page, read November 7, 2026, lists approval gates for sensitive actions such as sending messages or updating records. The help article read the same day says write actions default to Always ask during a run. Claude’s Enterprise help article, also read November 7, says admins can turn off “Skip all approvals” and “Automatically approve,” so a member cannot let Claude act on tools, file edits, and browsing without being asked. A guardrail is the wider family of checks. The gate is the specific pause. How many gates you set is an autonomy choice. The tool still runs only after the gate opens.
The workplace guide is What is an AI employee?. A payment gate in a store is agentic checkout.