Human-in-the-Loop
Human-in-the-loop is a design pattern where an AI system pauses at checkpoints you define and asks a person to approve, edit or reject its proposed action before continuing, keeping consequential decisions under human control.
No jargon, no math
In plain words, what is it?
You set the checkpoints once: payments above €5,000, contracts, anything sent to a customer. Below them the agent acts alone; at them it stops and packages its proposal for review: what it wants to do, on what basis, with which data. You approve, edit or reject with one click. The decision feeds back into the loop: an approval executes, a rejection becomes a new instruction, and the agent retries. The point is not distrust, it is leverage: the machine does 95% of the work, the human keeps 100% of the authority where it matters. It breaks in two ways: rubber-stamping, where reviewers approve blindly and the checkpoint is theatre, and bottlenecking, where every trivial step waits on a person.
- 01
Work. The agent completes the task up to the checkpoint.
- 02
Flag. The proposal is packaged for review: what, why, on which data.
- 03
Decide. You approve, edit or reject, in one click.
- 04
Feed back. Approval executes the action; rejection becomes a new instruction.
- 05
Log. Every decision is recorded for audit and learning.
Terms that live nearby.
Guardrails
Guardrails are the checks and limits wrapped around an AI model so its behaviour stays inside your rules: they screen what goes in, constrain what the model can do, and verify what comes out before it reaches a person or a system.
ReadAI Agent
An AI agent is software that pursues a goal on your behalf: it reads the situation, plans the next step, acts through tools (email, calendars, databases, APIs) and checks the result before continuing, instead of answering one question and stopping.
ReadAgent Loop
The agent loop is the cycle an AI agent repeats while pursuing a goal: observe the current state, plan the next action, act through a tool, check the result, then continue, re-plan or stop.
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We design and ship AI systems with permissions, logs and human approval. It starts with a 30-minute scoping call.