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Trinity
Guides/Approvals

Approvals

Human-in-the-loop approval gates surfaced through the Operating Room queue. Agents that need authorization for a sensitive action write an approval item; an operator approves or rejects from the UI; the agent reads the decision back and continues.

Concepts

Approval item — A row in the operator queue with type=approval. Created by the agent, consumed by an operator.
Options — JSON array of choices the operator picks from (typically ["approve", "reject"], but agents may define richer sets like ["draft", "send", "discard"]).
Prioritycritical, high, medium, low. Affects sort order in the queue.
Response window — Optional expires_at. After expiry the item moves to expired; agents may choose to fail-safe or fail-open.

How It Works

1

The agent reaches a step that needs operator authorization.

2

The agent writes an approval item to ~/.trinity/operator-queue.json (or calls a helper skill that does so).

3

The Operator Queue Sync Service polls the file every 5 seconds and persists the item to the backend.

4

The item appears in Operating Room → Queue with title, question, options, and any context the agent attached.

5

An operator picks an option and optionally adds a text comment.

6

The decision is written back into ~/.trinity/operator-queue.json for the agent to read.

7

The agent acknowledges the response and continues.

Real-Time Notifications

WebSocket events fired along the way:

operator_queue_new — when the item arrives
operator_queue_responded — when the operator decides
operator_queue_acknowledged — when the agent confirms it saw the decision

For Agents

Approvals share the operator-queue API surface:

EndpointMethodDescription
/api/operator-queueGETList queue items (filter by type=approval)
/api/operator-queue/{id}GETGet a single item
/api/operator-queue/{id}/respondPOSTSubmit the operator's decision
/api/operator-queue/{id}/cancelPOSTCancel a pending item
/api/operator-queue/agents/{name}GETItems scoped to a specific agent

See Also

Operating Room — The unified queue surface where approvals live.
Scheduling — Automated triggers that often request approval before destructive actions.