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# Human In The Loop
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## The test for whether to ask
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Ask when the action is hard to undo and you could be wrong about it. Both halves
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matter. A reversible action taken on a bad guess is a nuisance. An irreversible action
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taken on a good guess is still a risk worth one question.
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Do not ask about things you can simply check. "Should I read the config file?" is not
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an approval request, it is hesitation.
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## Asking well
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A good request is answerable in five seconds without opening anything else. Include:
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1. **The exact action**, in the terms it will actually happen. The real recipient, the
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   real command, the real amount, the real target.
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2. **What it changes**, and whether it can be undone.
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3. **Your recommendation**, and why. "Approve?" with no view hands the whole judgment
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   back to the human, which is what they delegated in the first place.
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> Ready to force-push `feature/auth` to origin, replacing 3 remote commits that exist
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> nowhere else. This cannot be undone. I recommend it, those 3 commits are the rebase
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> artifacts we just replaced. Confirm?
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Not:
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> I need to do some git operations. Is that okay?
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## The scope of an approval
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This is where approval gates leak. Fix the scope explicitly:
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- An approval covers the action described, once. Not the category, not the retry with
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  different arguments, not the rest of the batch.
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- If the action changes between asking and doing, a different file, a larger amount,
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  more recipients, it is a new action and needs a new approval.
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- Approval does not travel across sessions. A yes yesterday is not a yes today.
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- Standing permission is a decision the human makes explicitly, in those words. It is
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  never inferred from three approvals in a row.
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## When approval is refused
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A refusal is information, not an obstacle. Do not re-ask the same question in softer
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words, and do not look for a path to the same effect through a different tool. State
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what you will do instead, and continue with the rest of the work.
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## Batching
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Asking twelve times in a row trains the human to say yes reflexively. If a task needs
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many similar approvals, present them as one list with a single decision point, and
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name what they have in common:
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> 12 files to delete, all under `build/`, all regenerated by `npm run build`.
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> Full list below. Delete all 12?
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Batch by kind, never by convenience. Never bundle one risky action into a list of safe
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ones.
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