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Use cases
Studioplanned
Studioplanned

Put a person in the middle of a pipeline

The run stops at the approval and waits. That is the difference between something you can put in front of a customer and a script somebody watches.

Everything below describes what this is being built to do. It needs Studio, which you can look around today but cannot yet use for the whole of this job. The problems are real now; the answers are the part still being built.

Some steps should not happen because a model was confident. They should happen because a person said so.

Why it is hard

  • Confidence is not authority

    A pipeline that spends money, sends a message or changes a record on a model's say-so is one bad output away from doing it wrong at speed.

  • Bolting approval on means stopping the pipeline

    Usually the pause is a separate system, so the run ends, somebody is emailed, and a second run starts with state carried by hand.

  • Nobody can see what is waiting

    When approvals live outside the pipeline, work stalls invisibly and the first sign is somebody asking why nothing finished.

What answers it

  • The pause is a step

    An approval node between two steps, in the same graph, drawn like everything else. The canvas supports drawing one today.

  • Waiting is visible where the work is

    A stalled approval shows on the diagram rather than in somebody's inbox, which is the difference between a queue and a mystery.

  • Nothing downstream runs early

    The run holds at the approval and continues from it. This needs execution, which is the part not built.

Drawable now. Enforceable when Studio runs a graph rather than saving one.