# Do AI sales agents need human approval before they send?

**Not for everything, and approving everything is how approval stops meaning
anything.** Approval belongs to a short list of moments — a deal outside its
usual shape, a line nobody stands behind, a promise a person must make — and
the rest should go out with a record instead.

A person approving every message reads the first fifty carefully and the next
five hundred not at all. The queue clears, nobody is reading, and the
approvals are now a signature on things nobody saw. That is worse than no
approval, because it looks like oversight.

## Where approval earns its place

| send with a record | ask first |
|---|---|
| a line from your register that is current | a line that is overdue, disputed or unowned |
| a price inside a range somebody owns | a number outside it |
| a follow-up inside the limits you set | a promise with a date in it |
| a standard term | a variation on one |

**The split is the point.** Most companies control who signs and leave the
shape of the deal open. Approval should sit on the shape.

## Approvers run out

Every ask spends somebody's attention, and attention does not grow because
more agents are asking. A register full of gaps sends more to approvers, so
the fastest way to need fewer approvals is fewer gaps: owners on lines, dates
kept current.

**And approval never disappears entirely.** As an agent earns room, less of
what it does is reviewed. Some of it always is, because a share nobody looks
at is how drift goes unseen.

## What to decide, and write down

1. **Which moments need a person**, in terms of the deal and the line, not
   the agent.
2. **Who that person is**, by role, read from your own directory.
3. **What silence means.** An ask nobody answers is not a yes, and the agent
   should say *I'm checking* rather than wait for ever.

## What this does not do

Reynforce records each ask and who it went to. **Recording the approver's
answer is not built yet**, and a page saying otherwise would be the first
untrue thing on it.

</roll-out-ai-agents-in-sales-without-legal-blocking-it.md> covers the
sign-off that comes before any of this.
</what-should-an-ai-agent-be-allowed-to-promise.md> lists the permissions.