# Approval Queue

> Queue agent-proposed actions for asynchronous human review while the agent continues other work.

- **Category**: Agentic AI
- **Subcategory**: Safety & Control
- **Canonical URL**: https://designpattern.fyi/patterns/approval_queue/

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## Description
**Intent**: Queue agent-proposed actions for asynchronous human review while the agent continues other work.
**Context**: A team is operating a long-running agent product that performs many actions per session — sending emails, posting messages, opening tickets, scheduling meetings — where a non-trivial fraction of those actions need a human to look at them before they ship. Stopping the entire agent loop after every proposed action while a human gets around to clicking approve would reduce throughput to a trickle and waste the parallelism the agent could otherwise exploit.
**Solution**: Agent emits proposed action to an approval queue with context. A human (or supervisor agent) reviews the queue and approves or rejects. Approved actions are executed by the agent or by a runner. The agent can continue parallel work while waiting; some workflows pause specific branches.


## Use Cases
- Some agent actions require human review but blocking the agent until review completes is unacceptable.
- Reviewers (humans or supervisor agents) can process queued actions asynchronously.
- The agent has parallel work it can pursue while specific branches await approval.





## Trade-offs


### Advantages

- Human oversight without blocking throughput.

- Approval inbox is auditable.




### Considerations & Drawbacks

- Inbox fatigue at scale.

- World drift between proposal and approval.







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**Reference**: [Original Source](https://www.agentpatternscatalog.org/patterns/approval-queue/)