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Architecture7 min read
Designing human review for AI workflows
How to make escalation and review usable, timely, and accountable instead of adding a ceremonial approval step.
Define what the reviewer can change
Human review is effective only when the reviewer has enough context, time, authority, and a clear action. Decide whether they approve, correct, reject, defer, or escalate, and what happens when nobody responds.
Place review at the right point
Review before an irreversible action when consequences are high. For lower-risk, reversible work, sampling and post-action review may provide better coverage without blocking every interaction.
- Show source context and uncertainty.
- Avoid default choices that encourage automatic approval.
- Set queues, response expectations, and fallback behaviour.
- Protect reviewers from cross-user data exposure.
Use outcomes to improve the system
Log corrections and escalation reasons in a privacy-conscious form. Those outcomes can reveal missing guidance, weak evaluations, changing inputs, and places where automation should be narrowed.