human in the loop, an approval step or a manual review step
An approval gate is a step in an automation where a person must review and approve something before the workflow carries on, often called human in the loop.
An approval gate is a point in an automation where it stops and waits for a person to check something. Once they approve, the workflow carries on. If they reject it, it goes another way.
It's often called human in the loop. You use it before anything risky or client facing, like sending an invoice, emailing a candidate, publishing content or letting an AI change records.
Approval gates let you automate most of a process while keeping the decisions that matter with a person.
I add an approval gate anywhere a mistake would be embarrassing or expensive. Everything else runs on its own.
In Zapier, I use the Human in the Loop approval step where I can. The Zap pauses, the reviewer gets an email or Slack message, and the same Zap carries on once they approve. It needs a paid plan, and Team or Enterprise if someone other than the account owner approves. If the reviewer doesn't use Zapier, I use a Zapier Tables queue with an Approve button instead. In ClickUp, it's often a status like Awaiting approval with an automation on the next status. With AI, I always put a gate in front of anything that goes to a customer.
One Zap. The approval step uses 1 task, the send uses 1, and the AI step depends on the model you pick.
Before anything that's hard to undo or that a customer will see, like sending money, emails or offers, deleting data, or letting an AI change records.
No. The automation still does the prep and the follow-up. The person spends seconds on the decision instead of minutes on the admin.
Yes. ClickUp says Super Agents are designed to ask a person to approve critical decisions. In Zapier, I switch on 'Require approval before running' for any AI tool that sends or changes something, and I put approval steps in front of MCP actions too.
I set these up and train your team, in your own ClickUp or Zapier account.
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