Human in the loop

Human in the loop covers two shapes of the same idea. In one, the agent itself decides, based on its instructions, that it needs to ask a person something, a clarifying question, a confirmation, before it continues. In the other, a specific step is set up so that it always pauses for a person, regardless of what the agent decides, the stricter pattern usually called an approval gate.

Regulated processes typically require a named, accountable person at specific points in a decision, and human in the loop is how that accountability gets built into the system's design rather than assumed after the fact.

An agent drafts a client communication and asks a person to confirm the intent is right before it proceeds, and a separate, mandatory gate still holds the final send step regardless of that earlier confirmation.

In Dynamiq, a Human Feedback tool lets an agent ask a question and wait for a reply, or send a status update without waiting, while execution approval on a node pauses that node every time it is about to run. Both pause the run, surface the prompt over a live connection, and resume, sometimes minutes or days later, from a checkpoint the moment a reply arrives.