Free control checklist
Human-in-the-Loop Checklist for AI Agents
“A human is involved” is not a control description. This checklist helps you define who intervenes, at what point and with what information.
Identify actions that need approval
Start with impact. Approval is most valuable immediately before an action that is difficult, costly or sensitive to reverse.
- Sending messages to customers, applicants or partners.
- Issuing refunds, payments, credits or financial commitments.
- Changing source code, production systems or access rights.
- Creating, updating or deleting important business records.
- Making decisions that affect employment, eligibility or service access.
- Sharing confidential or personal information.
Design the approval step
Give the approver enough context to make a decision. A confirmation button with no proposed action or evidence is not meaningful oversight.
- Name the role allowed to approve.
- Show the proposed action, destination and relevant source data.
- Make edits and rejection possible.
- Prevent the action from continuing after timeout or rejection.
- Avoid letting the agent approve its own output through another step.
Check workload and bypass paths
A control that overwhelms reviewers will be ignored or removed. Review expected volume and define when low-impact actions can follow a narrower rule.
- Measure how many approvals occur in a normal day.
- Escalate when no approver is available.
- Log manual overrides and emergency bypasses.
- Review repeated approvals that could become a safe bounded rule.
- Test that direct tool access cannot bypass the gate unnoticed.
Monitor and improve
Use rejection, edit and incident patterns to improve the workflow. Human oversight should produce evidence, not merely delay execution.
- Log approver, decision, time and relevant comment.
- Review why outputs are rejected or heavily edited.
- Reassess approval after model, prompt, tool or permission changes.
- Test pause and revocation procedures.
- Keep a named owner for the overall control.
Practical advice
Place approval as close as possible to the consequential action. Reviewing a weekly summary after refunds have been issued is monitoring, not approval.
For lower-impact work, sampling and output review may be proportionate. Document why the chosen control fits the workflow.
FAQ
Questions people ask before a review
Record approval controls next to each agent.
Make missing gates visible and track the work needed to add them.