Keeping a person in control
Full autonomy is risky for consequential tasks. Human in the loop designs the agent to pause and ask a person to approve, edit, or reject an action at chosen checkpoints.
Patterns of involvement
- Approve the agent proposes an action and waits for a yes before running it
- Edit the human corrects the agent's draft before it proceeds
- Escalate the agent hands off when confidence is low or stakes are high
- Review a human checks the final output before delivery
A checkpoint flow
The agent works until it reaches a gated action, then pauses for human input and continues based on the response.
Designing the checkpoints
Put gates where actions are costly or irreversible, not on every step, or people will rubber stamp from fatigue. Show the human enough context to decide quickly, and record their choices to improve the agent over time.
Key idea
Human in the loop places approval, edit, and escalation checkpoints at high stakes moments, keeping a person in control without gating every routine step.