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Hero illustration for chapter 07, Human in the Loop

Practice

Human in the Loop

HITL done well is empowering, not theatre. A practical pattern catalogue.

HITL is not a checkbox

A lot of "human in the loop" systems end up as theatre. There's a human, technically, looking at a stream of approvals, clicking "yes" over and over. That isn't oversight. That's a rubber stamp.

Real HITL has three properties:

  1. The human has the information they need to decide.
  2. The human has the time and authority to say no.
  3. Saying no has a clean, low-friction path.

If any of those is missing, you don't have a human in the loop. You have a human on the hook.

A pattern catalogue

Pattern When to use it
Plan-then-approve Multi-step agentic work (refactors, migrations).
Sample review High-volume low-stakes decisions (tagging, triage).
Escalation on uncertainty Model confidence below threshold → route to human.
Dual control Irreversible or sensitive actions (prod deploys, customer comms).
Audit-only Fully automated, but every action is reviewable after the fact.

Pick the pattern that matches the blast radius of the decision, not the convenience of the team.

A heuristic

If a human couldn't reasonably review one action in this stream, you should not be reviewing all of them. Either reduce the stream, raise the threshold, or change the pattern.