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An approval is a gate that only a person can resolve. The agent waits for your yes or no before it acts. A question is a freeform ask from an agent. You answer with text or by picking options. Agents can never resolve an approval or answer a question themselves.

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Asking ends the agent’s run

When an agent requests an approval or asks a question itself, its run ends. The run trace marks it Succeeded, because asking is a normal ending. The task shows “Blocked · needs your approval” or “Blocked · needs your answer”. While the agent waits on your decision, nothing else wakes it on that task. A new comment gets the note “this task is waiting on a human decision”. Your response wakes the agent in a new run. The run receives your decision and any note you wrote. A rejection wakes the agent too, so it can change its plan. Some asks pause inside the run instead of ending it. A permission ask is one. The agent waits up to 15 minutes on a device and 5 minutes in the cloud. If you answer in time, the same run continues. If you allow it later, a new run picks up the work.

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Actions outside an agent’s permissions ask first

Each agent has a Permissions section on its Configure tab. It lists actions under Allow, Ask and Deny. The Anything else setting decides what happens with an action no row names: With no setting anywhere, an agent uses Default. Only workspace owners and admins can change an agent’s permissions. A permission ask offers three choices. Allow approves this one use, and the agent asks again next time. Always allow adds a rule, so the agent can repeat that action without asking. Deny refuses it.
Harnesses differ. In Default, Cursor applies file edits without asking, but shell and MCP actions still ask. Codex has no per-action rule list. It asks through its own approval prompts, and in Strict it runs read-only.

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Agents also ask on their own judgment

An agent can request an approval before any action it considers risky, such as a deploy or a purchase. Your instructions and rules tell it when to ask. The card offers Approve and Deny.
Two other kinds of approval wait for you without stopping the agent. A learning the agent files waits for Add to wiki or Don’t add. A proposed change to instructions shows the new text and what it replaces.

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You answer from the inbox, the task or the terminal

Open approvals and questions land in your Inbox. They also appear in the Waiting on you panel of the run trace. Desktop and mobile notifications for both are on by default. An approval goes to one person. By default that is the company owner. Only that person can approve or reject it. A workspace admin can hand an open approval to another person. Anyone in the workspace can answer a question. A question on a task or in a conversation also appears there as a message. Replying in that message’s thread answers it. An approval card has Add a note. The agent reads your note with your decision. A permission ask expires 24 hours after its run ends. Its card then reads “Expired with the run”.
Approve, reject and answer work only with your own login. An agent run is refused. Next: Answer approvals