Approval Gating Glossary
Approval gating is the practice of placing explicit human consent in front of actions an AI agent should not take on its own: sending messages, spending money, deleting files, changing production systems, exposing private data, or making irreversible commitments.
In a chatbot, approval is often informal: the user asks, the model answers. In an agentic system, the model can act through tools. That makes the difference between suggestion and execution much more important. Approval gates turn I could do this into I will only do this after the human authorises it.
Approval gating is not a sign that the agent is weak. It is a sign that the system understands authority. The most dangerous systems are not the ones that ask permission too often; they are the ones that quietly blur the line between recommendation and action.