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Pause workflows for approval with Chat SDK

Chat SDK can pause a workflow for a verified human decision and resume after seconds or days, without a custom approvals table, action handler, or polling loop.

Vercel · Aug 6, 2026
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Source Summary

Chat SDK’s new **chat/workflow** path adds requestApproval, which posts Approve and Deny controls and suspends a Workflow SDK run. The wait survives deploys and restarts, and Thread state crosses the workflow boundary automatically.

Practical Implication

Use this as a durable gate before an agent deploys, changes production data, or takes another consequential action. **Scoped approvers**, platform-signature checks, and the returned user identity reduce the custom authorization plumbing.

Agent-Ready Context
Chat SDK’s new **chat/workflow** path adds requestApproval, which posts Approve and Deny controls and suspends a Workflow SDK run. The wait survives deploys and restarts, and Thread state crosses the workflow boundary automatically.

Use this as a durable gate before an agent deploys, changes production data, or takes another consequential action. **Scoped approvers**, platform-signature checks, and the returned user identity reduce the custom authorization plumbing.

The material covers a binary approval card, timeout handling, and an edited-in-place audit outcome. It does not describe richer review flows, delegation, or how long approval records remain available.
Connected Context · Feed7 Judgment

Chat SDK now supplies a durable human gate for consequential agent actions instead of requiring applications to build suspension, restart recovery, authorization, and thread-state plumbing themselves. This concretizes approval cards already present in the surrounding channel tooling and complements broader async durability work. The capability remains deliberately narrow: binary approval is covered, but multi-stage review, delegation, and retention policy are not established.

Use any Chat SDK adapter with eveeve already carries approval cards across Chat SDK adapters; requestApproval adds the durable workflow suspension and identity-bearing decision needed to make those cards enforce consequential-action gates.Chat SDK now supports reactions and ephemeral messages on TeamsTeams’ private interaction primitives can support permission-sensitive flows, but durable scoped approval is a stronger authorization boundary than reactions or ephemeral status messages and still depends on adapter-specific delivery behavior.MCP Tasks (async): Why Aren't Any Agents Supporting Them? — Cornelia Davis, TemporalBoth address long-running agent work surviving interruption: MCP Tasks proposes a general task durability contract, while Chat SDK implements a narrower durable wait specifically for human approval with thread state preserved.github/copilot-sdkCopilot SDK makes permissions an application-boundary responsibility; Chat SDK’s approval gate provides a concrete control applications can place before embedded agents exercise high-impact permissions.
Context Map
toolscoding#agent-sdks#tool-use#agent-reliability
Uncertainty
The material covers a binary approval card, timeout handling, and an edited-in-place audit outcome. It does not describe richer review flows, delegation, or how long approval records remain available.