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A session can stop mid-turn and wait for a human in two distinct ways. Both are durable: the wait survives worker restarts, and the answer resumes the exact same turn.

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Tool approvals

Tools can be classified so that a proposed call must be approved before it runs. When the agent proposes such a call, the session enters requires_action and the timeline shows the pending call.
  • A human approves or rejects it. Rejection returns to the agent as the tool’s outcome, so it can adapt.
  • Approvals are human-only. An agent cannot approve its own or another session’s tool calls.

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Structured human input

Agents have a built-in request_human_input tool for questions that need an answer before the turn can continue. One request holds up to 20 questions of three kinds: free text, single select, and multi select. Select questions accept an inline “Other” free-text answer. A request can allow Skip and can carry an expiry deadline. The outcome is delivered to the agent as ordinary tool output: No outcome creates a synthetic user message or starts a new turn. Workspace admins can disable the tool with the agentHumanInputEnabled workspace setting.

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Sending a message while the session waits

If you send an ordinary message while the session is waiting on an approval or a question, the pending wait is cancelled and your message is delivered as a Steer. That makes “actually, do this instead” a single action.

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Where the wait shows up

Both waits appear on the session timeline in the web app, on embedded timelines built with @opengeni/react, and in the session’s events through the API. A structured question from a child session can also be answered by an authorized agent in another session; tool approvals never can. The backend createChatHandler exposes unresolved approvals and questions through its history endpoint. Custom frontends must restore and render these pending requests and submit responses through its respond endpoint. For the full native React experience, use the existing session hooks and human-input components rather than a separate chat UI.