Engineering teams implement secure human approval steps in automation pipelines.

A human approval step is a deliberate pause in an automated workflow where a designated person must approve or reject the process before it continues. Technical implementations differ, with tools like n8n using a Wait node, GitHub Actions using environment protection rules, and AWS Step Functions using callback tokens. The core design requires a durable pause, a specific approver, and a secure resume trigger to prevent unauthorized continuation. Teams are advised to place these approval gates at stages where an automated error would be costly to reverse.